
Class ikJM^ 

Book - VY^ 

Copyright N". 



COPYRtGKT DEPOSIT. 



ARE WE READY? 



ARE WE READY^ 



BY HOWARD D. WHEELER 



WITH A LETTER 

BY 

MAJOR-GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

(iCije Hiitjer^ibe )^xt^^ Cambribge 

1915 



■w 



COPYRIGHT, I915, BY HOWARD D. WHEELER 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published February iqi$ 



J* 



MAR I I9!5 
CI,A393775 



TO THE 
DAUGHTER OF A SOLDIER— MY WIFE 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

I wish to express my gratitude to the editor of Har- 
per's Weekly for permission to reprint in this volume 
certain papers which appeared in that publication dur- 
ing December, 1914, and January, 1915. 

I am also indebted to Mr. Oliver Herford and to 
Mr. Boardman Robinson for the right to use drawings 
owned by them. 

H. D. W. 

New York, January 7, 1915. 



CONTENTS 

A Letter sdii 

^1. Gold and Iron 1 

"■ II. An Attack on New York 11 

III. A Bottled Navy 37 

IV. The Hole in our Pocket 55 

V. Our Citizen Fighters 83 

VI. The Battle of the Connecticut . . .108 

VII. Hell on Wheels 126 

VIII. The Great American Bugaboo . . . 148 

IX. The Extra Tire in War 175 

., X. Well? 195 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Major-General Leonard Wood . . . Frontispiece 

Twentieth United States Infantry in Ma- 
neuvers AT Fort Bliss, Texas 4 

Madison Square, New York, after an 
Aerial Raid 14 

From a Drawing by Oliver Herford. 

Signal Corps Man 20 

Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War, 1911- 
1913 28 

Big Guns at Fort Wadsworth, Staten 
Island, New York 34 

George Von L. Meyer, Secretary of the 
Navy, 1909-1913 46 

Our Thousand-Dollar Soldier 60 

Fort Cook, Nebraska: An Army Post con- 
structed AND maintained AT MAXIMUM CoST 68 

Fort Sheridan, Illinois: A National Extrav- 
agance 72 

Militia in Sham Battle 84 

A Mess Table of the New York National 
Guard, Montauk Point, Long Island . . 90 

Militia in Battle Practice 98 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Militia Ofmcers in Consultation during 

Field Practice 102 

Prussian Citizen Soldiery op 1870 . . . .118 

From a Painting by Edouard Detaille. 

The Terror of the Germans: The Famous 
French Artillery in Action 132 

Mountain Battery of the United States 
Army 136 

Comparative Strength of the Nations in 
Field Artillery 137 

An American Field Artillery Battery in 
Action 140 

A French Field Artillery Battery .... 144 

Swiss and German Soldiers at the Frontier 158 

College Students learning the Fine Points 
OF Trench-Digging .170 

A Student Soldiers' Mess . 170 

We have 16 Trained Men as Listed Re- 
servists 180 

Skirmish Drill at the Burlington Camp . . 196 

Open-Order Practice at Burlington, Ver- 
mont 196 

The Students' Camp at Ludington .... 21^ 

Students in the Trenches at Gettysburg . 212 

President Wilson delivering an Address in 
Front of Independence Hall, Philadelphia, 
July 4, 1914 222 



A LETTER 

Governor's Island, N.Y., 
January 8th, 1915. 

My dear Mr. Wheeler: — 

I have read with much interest your articles 
in Harper's Weekly^ written evidently for the 
purpose of bringing to the attention of the 
American people the necessity of adequate pre- 
paredness for defense, and I am very glad to 
learn that you are to pubUsh a book on the 
same general lines with a view to bringing our 
needs in this particular to the attention of the 
American public. It is a subject, in my opin- 
ion, deserving of serious and careful attention 
on the part of the people. I do not mean to 
indicate that we should have such a degree of 
preparedness, or that we should prepare in such 
a spirit as to justify the charge of militarism, 
but only to such an extent and in such a man- 
ner as to secure that rational and reasonable 
degree of preparedness which will render us 
able promptly and efifectively to defend our- 

xiii 



A LETTER 

selves, our interests, and our institutions 
against aggression. 

I have stated plainly in official reports, 
which are pubhc documents and open to your 
inspection and use, my views and recommend- 
ations in the way of preparedness, the necessity 
of preparation in time of peace, and the impos- 
sibility of making preparation after war has 
once commenced, at least without such delay 
as would result in great and unnecessary 
losses. 

While entertaining the highest opinion of the 
soldierly qualities of the American, it can be 
stated that those who know what war is real- 
ize that to send the youth of this country, 
untrained and unprepared, into war means a 
needless and wanton waste of life. It means 
more, — it means that the lessons of history 
have not been taken to heart. 

Even in the early days of the Republic, when 
our territorial possessions were limited to a 
relatively small portion of this continent, when 
transportation overseas was slow and danger- 
ous, and wars came slowly, when our possible 

xiv 



A LETTER 

enemies were unprepared to strike promptly 
and our people were still to a large extent used 
to the rifle and accustomed to take care of 
themselves in camp and forest, even then our 
early Presidents saw clearly the danger inci- 
dent to unpreparedness and urged upon Con- 
gress in message after message reasonable 
measures of preparation. 

Washington, in his first annual address, 
stated: — 

To be prepared for war is one of the most effec- 
tual means of preserving peace. A free people 
ought not only to be armed but disciplined, to 
which end a uniform and well-digested plan is re- 
quisite. 

Again: — 

The safety of the United States, under Divine 
protection, ought to rest on the basis of systematic 
and solid arrangements, exposed as little as pos- 
sible to the hazards of fortuitous circumstances. 

President Adams said : — 

But in demonstrating by our conduct that we do 
not fear war in the necessary protection of our rights 
and honor, we should give no room for any fear 

XV 



A LETTER 

that we abandon the desire of peace. An efficient 
preparation for war can alone insure peace. 

Thomas JefiFerson, in his fifth annual mes- 
sage, advocated: — 

The organization of three hundred thousand 
able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and 
twenty-six for offense or defense, at any time or 
any place where they may be wanted. 

In a letter to Monroe he advocated compul- 
sory military service in the following words: — 

We must train and classify the whole of our male 
citizens . . . and make military instruction a part 
of collegiate education. 

And again : — 

If war be forced upon us in spite of our long and 
vain appeals to the justice of nations, rapid and 
vigorous movement at the outset will go far toward 
securing us in its course and issue and throwing its 
burdens on those who render necessary the resort 
from reason to force. 

The principles laid down in these messages 
are just as sound to-day as they were when 
uttered, and they are even more pertinent in 
all which relates to a reasonable degree of pre- 

xvi 



A LETTER 

paredness, for wars now come much more 
quickly. 

That a rational degree of preparedness is not 
inconsistent with American institutions and 
ideals is clearly indicated in the last message of 
President Wilson, in which he states : — 

It will be right enough, right American policy, 
based on our accustomed principles and practices, 
to provide a system by which every citizen who will 
volunteer for the training may be made familiar 
with the use of modern arms, the rudiments of 
drill and maneuver, and the maintenance and sani- 
tation of camps. 

We should encourage such training and make it 
a means of discipline which our young men will 
learn to value. It is right that we should provide 
it not only, but that we should make it as attractive 
as possible, and so induce our young men to under- 
go it at such times as they can command a little 
freedom and can seek the physical development 
they need, for health's sake, if for nothing more. 

I know that your purpose in writing these 
articles and in amplifying them in book form is 
to concentrate the attention of our people upon 
that side of national life and responsibility 
which we hear little of. I mean reasonable 

xvii 



A LETTER 

preparation for defense to an extent consistent 
with our ideals and institutions. While we do 
not want militarism it seems to me most desir- 
able that we should secure that degree of mili- 
tary preparedness which is found in Switzer- 
land and is now being established in Australia, 
and that we can study with advantage the 
methods employed in these countries. In doing 
this we shall better American citizenship and 
manhood in that such training will result in the 
physical improvement of our youth, a higher 
regard for the rights of others, and a fuller 
appreciation of each man's duty to the State. 
Very sincerely, 

Leonard Wood. 



AEE WE READY? 



ARE WE EEADY? 

CHAPTER I 

GOLD AND IRON 

He was a clean-limbed, clean-minded, clean- 
blooded young American. By virtue of two 
very hard fists, one very active brain, and 
average American pluck, he had pounded his 
way to the top of his own particular pile. 
When I saw him last, he was slouched deject- 
edly on a narrow wooden bench in a little coop 
in the corner of a prize-ring enclosure in San 
Francisco — a much-battered youth, absently 
pressing the back of a swollen, bandaged hand 
against badly puffed lips. The usual bevy of 
fight experts were grouped around him, eye- 
ing him critically, pumping questions at him. 
Finally they prodded him into speech. This is 
what he said : ''Aw, I never got started. He 's a 
mark. I'll knock his head off the next time I 
get him in a ring with me." Up to now, there 

1 



ARE WE READY? 

has been no "next time." The mauhng the lad 
received shoved him from the top of the heap 
to the ranks of the "second-raters." He never 
got back. "Under-training, over-confidence, 
and carelessness" was the verdict of the "ex- 
perts." He had the "class," they agreed, but 
the other lad "beat him to the punch." 

All of which may or may not have anything 
whatever to do with the question of whether 
the United States of America is prepared for 
war with a first-class foreign power. It all 
depends on the way you look at it, or whether 
you bother yourself to look at it at all. 

Since the present conflict in Europe demon- 
strated the terrific possibilities of international 
disputes and exposed the horrible perfection of 
modern scientific warfare, there is not one of 
us, it is probably safe to say, who has not had 
his moments of speculation, more or less vague, 
as to whether, just in case . . . 

Our military experts for years, particularly 
since our trouble with Spain, when some rather 
startling difficulties presented themselves, in 
the way of putting where they were needed 



GOLD AND IRON 

men and guns (and the things to put into men 
and guns), have been hammering and hammer- 
ing on their arguments that we are not pre- 
pared for trouble, and that there is peril in our 
unpreparedness. Largely because these men 
are experts, perhaps, and therefore to the lay 
mind over-zealous and over-fearful, they have 
not been able to plant in the general run of us 
any very serious doubts as to our security here 
at home. We are a very young, a very busy, 
and a very confident people. 

Whether or not our confidence and our sense 
of security are justified, it is a fact that investi- 
gation will immediately reveal facts previously 
not guessed at or at any rate not fully grasped. 
I set this fact down because it was only re- 
cently that I completed just such an investi- 
gation. It was undertaken for the purpose of 
placing before the non-professional, unexpert 
American the facts of our preparedness for war, 
as found by a writer who approached his task 
with no preconceived notions or theories of 
war save the universal American sentiment 
against militarism, and a conviction that mod- 

3 



ARE WE READY? 

ern warfare will, some day, be looked upon as 
a wasteful and ridiculous means of expressing 
patriotism and advancing national hardihood, 
just as to-day we regard burning witches as a 
wasteful and ridiculous means of expressing 
faith and advancing religion. 

If 200,000 fighting men of any first-class hos- 
tile power should be landed on our Pacific 
Coast to-night, we should have no course save 
regretfully to hand over to a foreign nation the 
rich empire west of the Rockies, with its cities, 
its harbors, and the wealth of its valleys and 
mountains. 

If war were to be declared against us to-day, 
with portions of our regular army in the Philip- 
pines, Hawaii, Panama, and elsewhere, we could 
throw not more than 50,000 men into line of 
battle. With the utmost energy on the part 
of our officers, running our military machinery 
at top speed, it would take us at least six weeks 
to increase this force to 150,000 men. 

A successful defense of our long coast line, in 
case of an attempted hostile invasion, would 

4 



GOLD AND IRON 

require at least 300,000 men backed by a 
trained field army of not less than half a million 
men. We are wholly unprepared to assemble 
any such defensive force. 

Sudden invasion at this time would mean 
the certain loss of oxu- coast cities, to be re- 
gained only at an enormous cost of lives and 
treasure. 

Of the very Hmited estimate of 1300 field 
guns for our army, we have only between 700 
and 800 built. If all our guns were put into 
action at once, there is not enough ammunition 
in the country for an engagement lasting a 
single day. 

These are all facts, agreed upon by the 
ablest mihtary minds of the nation. There are 
many more just as interesting. 

Are they important.^ 

Is a trained force of 50,000 men within our 
borders ample at this time.^ 

Is an invasion of the United States possible 
or feasible.^ 

Could a foreign nation profit by it? If so, 
how.^ 

5 



ARE WE READY? 

On the premise that we can be forced into a 
war with a powerful, perfectly equipped, and 
thoroughly prepared foe and confronted with 
the immediate necessity of repelling an inva- 
sion, what then? 

Can we provide an adequate defensive force, 
ready for action on short notice? 

If not immediately, is it possible to provide 
against such an emergency in the future with- 
out adopting some sort of system of militarism, 
hateful to us, contrary to our best traditions? 
If so, how? 

It all sounds a good deal like an examination 
paper. Well, perhaps it is. Perhaps the Ameri- 
can people will find it worth while at this time 
to work out the answers. 

The "first punch" is considered to be as 
important in the military art as it is in the 
manual of the prize ring. This, probably, was 
never more clearly shown than at the opening 
of the present war in Europe. That Wilhelm's 
first "straight right" was blocked, the» coun- 
tered, was due to no lack of preparation, train- 

6 



GOLD AND IRON 

ing, or agility on his part, but to the fact that 
the other fellow, if not wholly prepared, was 
suflficiently alert to be able to block, to weather 
the first furious assault, and to wait for an 
opening for a heavy counter. 

The initial advantage of war is always with 
the aggressor. 

Major-General Leonard Wood, former Chief 

of StaflF of our army, in a recent interview I had 

with him, illustrated this point this way : — 

If an acquaintance has fully decided that it is 
necessary and advisable that he give you a thor- 
ough beating, he alone knows most of the vital 
details that go into what is coming your way. First 
of all, he knows of his decision. You do not. He 
knows precisely where he is going to hit you, when 
and how he will deliver the attack. You know 
none of this. What is more, he is not going to wait 
until you have begun to take boxing lessons. If you 
know that his attitude is not altogether friendly, 
you are lucky; and the best you can do is to keep 
your eyes open, your courage up, and your wind 
good. 

Whether this great military man's illustra- 
tion applies to the position of the United States 
among the nations of the world is of course de- 

7 



ARE WE READY? 

batable. Whether we are hkely to become the 
object of the sinister designs of a foreign power 
is a subject which we have entrusted to the 
gentlemen and ladies whom we hire to keep 
their ears to the ground — our secret service 
and our diplomatic corps. This much, how- 
ever, may be said: — 

Since the close of the Civil War, when there 
were in the United States about 1,500,000 men 
under arms, to the present, when we have a 
mobile army of about 32,000 men ready, as a 
nation we have been steadily advancing our 
international position. Commercially, indus- 
trially, and politically we have been constantly 
becoming more important. Our responsibili- 
ties at home and abroad have increased in the 
ratio of our influence. Growing prosperity and 
power is a breeder of jealousies in nations as in 
men. Back of the European war is the latest 
demonstration of this. 

Generally speaking, we are taking it for 
granted that because we do not want war we 
shall not have war. We argue: War is barba- 
rous and futile. We are enlightened. Therefore 

8 



GOLD AND IRON 

we shall not have war. The world's market is 
an open market. If increased productiveness 
and enterprise mean broader competition, we 
will compete. We will not fight. 

Generally speaking, we are taking it for 
granted that we do, and shall continue to, con- 
trol the Pacific. 

Generally speaking, we are taking it for 
granted that we shall continue successfully to 
uphold the Monroe Doctrine, regardless. 

Generally speaking, a nation emerging as con- 
queror from the present struggle in Europe, it- 
self based upon several things taken for granted, 
would look upon itself, and not without reason, 
as fully justified in taking over the work of 
development and culture in more or less unde- 
veloped regions — South America, for example. 

*'In the support of the Monroe Doctrine," a 
very able observer of international afiFairs said 
to me recently, "we must bear in mind that 
our stand has had the tacit support of Great 
Britain. Great Britain at present and for some 
years past has had a rather superior navy. We 
cannot see from where we sit how far the Euro- 

9 



ARE WE READY ? 

pean frog is going to jump. We can form no 
accurate picture of what Great Britain and her 
navy, or any other nation and its navy, not to 
mention armies and purses, are going to look 
like when this war is over." 

The statement, with its inference, is no 
doubt open to debate. There is no reason for 
presenting here an argument for or against. 

As a broad proposition, however, may it not 
be said that there is at least a possibiUty that 
while we, chock-full of confidence, happy, 
healthy, and prosperous, go blithely whistling 
up and down the highways of the world, some 
other fellow, not quite so care-free and a httle 
less opposed to a brawl, may be watching us 
with the cold eye of speculation? 

Maybe there is a modern application of the 
hint that Solon dropped to Croesus: "If an- 
other king comes who has better iron than you, 
he will be master of all this gold." 

Over in Europe we are getting daily proof of 
the fact that it is one thing to thumb one's nose 
at one's neighbor and quite another thing to 
watch one's eye. 



CHAPTER II 

AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

Suppose: — 

Portland, Me., March 1^ — A destroyer ar- 
riving here with one of its funnels shot away, 
and half its crew dead or wounded, reports that 
in a terrific engagement on the east and west 
lines of trade, south of Newfoundland and off 
the Banks, the American main battle fleet has 
been partially destroyed by a superior squad- 
ron of the enemy. The surviving vessels are 
apparently seeking refuge in Boston and New 
York harbors, and Narragansett Bay. 

Washington, March 12 — (Bulletin.) In a 
statement issued by the Government Press 
Bureau, the defeat of our main battle fleet is 
officially confirmed. The loss in ships and 
men is not given. 

Bar Harbor, March 14 — A dispatch boat 
reports the presence of several war vessels, 
thought to be the enemy's scout cruisers, off 

11 



ARE WE READY? 

the Massachusetts coast. A neutral steamship 
reports that the enemy's fleet has reassembled 
in large numbers. 

Boston, March 14 — A scout cruiser, arriv- 
ing here at midnight, reported having picked 
up a code wireless from the flagship of the 
enemy's fleet, carrying the information that 
the American fleet had been beaten and scat- 
tered, and instructing the movement of trans- 
ports toward the Atlantic Coast. 

Austin, Texas, March 14 — The Governor 
has refused to transmit the President's call for 
militia. Rumors of impending raids by Mexi- 
can irregulars are active along the border. 

Washington, March 15 — Semi-official re- 
ports, from New England coast cities, only par- 
tially confirmed, indicate the approach of a 
large fleet of transports, under heavy convoy. 

New York, March 16 — The official news of 
the defeat of our main battle fleet in an engage- 
ment off the Newfoundland Banks, followed by 
the arrival to-day of several of our smaller war- 
ships which crept into port, all badly crippled 
and carrying hundreds of dead and wounded. 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

has brought conditions here to the verge of 
panic. Frightful stories told by survivors, 
many of whom are in a state of hysteria, 
published in early editions of the evening 
papers, all indicate a disaster appalling in its 
extent. 

Rumors that a bombardment from the sea is 
imminent persist. Because of the seemingly 
hopeless confusion, mobilization of the mihtia 
is proceeding slowly in spite of the utmost 
efforts of the military authorities. 

Martial law has been declared. The Mayor 
has issued a proclamation advising banks and 
business houses to remove funds and valuables 
to Albany. Fear of bomb-dropping raids by 
aeroplanes launched from hostile warships has 
intensified the terror. Street illumination has 
been prohibited. New York will be in darkness 
to-night. Whole blocks of shops are closed and 
deserted. Looters have been ordered shot at 
sight. 

The Croton water supply is unprotected. 
The city officials have asked the Government 
for regular troops. 

13 



ARE WE READY? 

The tendency of civilians to rush frantically 
to arms without organization, trained oflBcers, 
or adequate equipment is increasing confusion 
and adding to the difficulty of preparing for a 
land defense. Motor vehicles are being com- 
mandeered for the transport of troops, equip- 
ment, and supplies. Station platforms are lit- 
tered with baggage which cannot be moved. 
Every train leaving the city is choked with 
refugees. Two women have been killed in a 
crush at the Grand Central Station. 

Boston, March 16 — A hundred or more per- 
sons, mostly women and children, were injured 
to-day, in a riot at the South Station. An un- 
official report, published here, that Boston may 
expect a bombardment within the next forty- 
eight hours, has thrown the city into a panic. 
Thousands are leaving by rail, every descrip- 
tion of vehicle, and on foot. 

New York, March 16 — The commander of 
an armored cruiser, who brought his crippled 
vessel into port last night, is quoted in an even- 
ing paper as saying : "The nature of the engage- 
ment, in which the enemy was successful in his 

U 




jVIADISON square, new YORK, AFTER AX AERIAL RAID 

From a Drawing by Oliver Herford 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

first purpose, to destroy and scatter our fleet, 
makes anything but the most general estimate 
of our losses impossible. That the disaster is 
complete there can be no doubt. The Ameri- 
can fleet fought with the most desperate cour- 
age. We have lost our most powerful vessels. 
Our defeat can be attributed to our inferiority 
in number of ships, in speed, in number of 
heavy guns, to lack of battle practice, and to 
shortage of men. We were hopelessly out- 
weighed at long-range fighting." 

Washington, March 16 — Official Washing- 
ton is stunned at the extent of our naval disas- 
ter as indicated in the fragmentary details con- 
firmed up to this time. The official statement 
of our losses is not expected for several days. 
A comparison of reports makes it evident that 
a third of our fighting ships have been de- 
stroyed and that the rest have been so badly 
crippled that they cannot go into action until 
they are overhauled. 

New York, March 16 — The central office of 
a press association reports that every important 
center on the Atlantic seaboard, from Galves- 

15 



ARE WE READY? 

ton to Portland, is frantically appealing to the 
Government for troops. 

Boston, March 16 — The hostile fleet has 
been picked up by a dispatch boat 150 miles off 
Cape Cod, headed west and steaming slowly. 
It could not be determined whether the fleet is 
making for Boston or New York. It is the evi- 
dent purpose of the commander to conceal his 
objective until the troops reported to be ap- 
proaching under convoy shall arrive. 

Panama, March 16 — The Governor Gen- 
eral has reported to Washington that steamers 
arriving at Colon have sighted hostile cruisers 
in the Caribbean. He has forwarded an urgent 
request that troops in the Canal Zone be in- 
creased and that an adequate ammunition sup- 
ply be established at once. Preparations for 
the defense of the Canal are inadequate. 

Washington, March 17 — Reports from va- 
rious States indicate that the President's call 
for 500,000 volunteers has met with instant 
response. The greatest difficulty is being ex- 
perienced in the effort to assemble, organize, 
and equip the recruits. It has developed that 

16 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

there are practically no officers available for 
organizing and training. The total lack of even 
a partially trained reserve for filling out the 
essential branches of an effective field force 
presents the gravest problems. There is an 
alarming shortage of cavalry, signal, engineer- 
ing, hospital, and field artillery equipment. 
The total available supply is hardly adequate 
for the regular army and more or less complete 
mihtia organizations. Reports made public 
indicate that both the regular army and the 
militia are lacking in organization and equip- 
ment. All the available coast artillery reserves 
have been sent to the fortifications along the 
Atlantic Coast. This will supply about haK 
the men needed at the guns. 

New York, March 17 — The mobilization of 
the regular army in the Albany district is com- 
plete. With the troops from the Mexican bor- 
der, withdrawn in spite of vigorous protests by 
Texas authorities and by several border cities, 
a force of 20,000, organized as a full division, is 
concentrated in the military camps. One divi- 
sion of cavalry is en route, 

17 



ARE WE READY? 

San Francisco, March 17 — A mass meeting 
was held here to-night to protest against the 
mihtia leaving California. The presence of 
what are believed to be hostile warships off the 
southern California coast is persistently ru- 
mored. The coast artillery has been brought to 
its full war strength. The artillery reserves 
have been brought in. 

Washington, March 18 — It is the consensus 
of opinion of army and navy heads that the 
enemy intends to strike in the region between 
Washington and Boston. A high army officer, 
whose name is withheld, is quoted as express- 
ing the belief that New York, because it is one 
of the most vulnerable of our large cities and 
would be most effective as a base of operations, 
and because, as the center of our arteries of 
commerce, its fall would have a paralyzing 
effect on the nation, has been selected for the 
initial attack. 

Washington, March 18 — In spite of vigorous 
efforts to muster every available man during 
the two weeks that have elapsed since the 
President's call for militia, the figures made 

18 



mf^:: 




< 

O 

< 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

public to-day are startlingly low. Reports from 
every State are in, and indicate that the militia 
cannot be mobilized at more than forty per 
cent of its war strength. At the present rate 
of mobilization, and with several States re- 
fusing to allow militia to leave, it is estimated 
that at least six weeks must elapse before a 
force of 150,000 men can be concentrated for 
defense. Unless men who have had service in 
foreign armies come to our assistance, this 
force will remain untrained. The shortage of 
field artillery, cavalry, equipment, and trains 
is almost incredible. The greatest shortage is 
in field artillery, by far the most important 
auxiliary in infantry operations. This arm of 
the service has not sufficient ammunition at 
hand for more than a brief action. It has de- 
veloped that New York has the only complete 
divisional organization. The total shortage, 
should the concentration of our available mili- 
tia be accomplished, is estimated as follows: 
80 batteries of field artillery; 70 troops of cav- 
alry; 17 companies of engineers; 26 field hospi- 
tals; 30 ambulance companies; 12 ammunition 

19 



ARE WE READY? 

trains; 12 supply trains; 12 pack trains. For 
the most part the miHtia is suppUed with a 
3-inch Hght field gun only. 

Washington, March 18 — All the Atlantic 
States, as well as Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, 
California, Oregon, and Washington, have 
flatly refused to allow their militia to leave. 
The President's military advisers are reported 
to be urging him to order the concentration of 
militia over the heads of those governors who 
are refusing to transmit his call. It is admitted 
that should such an order be resisted, it could 
be enforced only through process of law. The 
commanding officers of the North and South 
Atlantic districts are greatly exercised over the 
lack of coast-guard troops to protect the de- 
tached harbors, fire-control stations, and mili- 
tary works. 

Harrisburg, March 18 — The Governor has 
agreed to send the Pennsylvania militia to the 
Albany region. The militia is practically with- 
out field artillery and other equipment neces- 
sary to field service. 

Springfield, March 18 — The Massachusetts 
20 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

militia has finally been ordered to Albany. It 
is poorly equipped. Its transportation is im- 
provised, every description of vehicle having 
been pressed into its ammunition and supply 
trains. It is, necessarily, proceeding slowly. 

Washington, March 18 — (Bulletin.) The 
President has ordered the militia of every 
State to mobilize in the Albany district. 

New York, March 21 — An American scout 
cruiser, arriving here, reports having sighted a 
large fleet of transports approaching the east- 
ern entrance to Long Island Sound. 

Washington, March 21 — (Bulletin.) Under 
cover of a night fog, the coast artillery force 
on Fisher's Island was overpowered and the 
big guns rendered useless in a raid last night by 
a strong landing force of the enemy, according 
to an official statement issued by the Press 
Bureau to-day. A smaller force, with field 
guns brought from the warships, landed on the 
eastern side of Watch Hill, drove off the de- 
fenders of Fort Mansfield, and destroyed the 
mechanism of the guns, according to the same 
official report. 

21 



ARE WE READY? 

New London, March 21 — (Bulletin.) A large 
number of troop ships under heavy convoy are 
entering Long Island Sound from the east. 
Troops are evidently about to be landed on 
the Connecticut shore east of here. Advance 
bodies of the hostile forces are momentarily 
expected. The city is rapidly becoming de- 
serted. Terror-stricken inhabitants are leaving 
by hundreds. 

Washington, March 21 — The following oflB- 
cial statement has been issued by the War De- 
partment: "Troops in large force are being 
landed from the enemy's transports at a point 
east of New London. Advices from the vicin- 
ity of the invaded area are that United States 
regulars with a small force of militia offered a 
short resistance. They were driven back by the 
guns of the warships. With the hostile troops 
are being landed field artillery, several heavy 
guns, apparently of the siege type, and large 
quantities of supplies and ammunition. An 
aerial squadron has apparently been landed in 
Fort Pond Bay near Montauk Point, where the 
work of assembling aeroplanes is reported to 

22 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

be under way. Infantry and field artillery have 
also been landed at this point, according to the 
same report, indicating that the enemy plans a 
movement through Long Island. Telegraphic 
communication with New London has been 
severed. Reports froir. Waterford, Montville, 
and Chesterfield indicate that large bodies of 
troops are being pushed forward rapidly. The 
New York, New Haven & Hartford lines have 
been seized. It is evidently the enemy's inten- 
tion to advance as rapidly as possible in order 
to hold the bridges toward New York. A 
strong detachment has been sent out in the 
direction of Boston with the apparent object of 
interrupting railroad communication toward 
Boston." 

Philadelphia, March 23 — It is reported from 
the Delaware Capes that a large fleet, appar- 
ently composed of transports, cruisers, and 
battleships, is headed for the Chesapeake. By 
order of the Governor, the movement of the 
Pennsylvania militia has been suspended. 

New York, March 23 —The delay in the ad- 
vance of the Pennsylvania militia, caused by 

23 



ARE WE READY? 

the rumor of a war fleet making for the Chesa- 
peake, has caused the greatest embarrassment 
in the preparations for the defense of New 
York. The fleet reported in yesterday's dis- 
patch is now known to consist of hght cruisers 
and colKers. No hostile move toward the 
Chesapeake is apparently under way, accord- 
ing to the latest advices from Washington. 

Washington, March 23 — A Press Bureau 
statement contains the opinion of naval and 
military authorities that the enemy will not 
risk his ships against coast defense guns and 
there is no immediate prospect of a bombard- 
ment of New York from the sea. They believe 
that he intends moving through Connecticut 
to cut off Boston and to attack New York from 
the rear of its fortifications. This move will 
render the coast defenses powerless. The big 
coast guns cannot be trained inland and cover 
the harbor entrances only. They are practi- 
cally unprotected against a land attack. If 
the surmised movement through Long Island 
is correct, it means that the defenses at Willet's 
Point and Fort Hamilton will soon be in the 

24 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

hands of the enemy. This would put Fort 
Slocum out of action and open up the eastern 
entrance to New York Harbor to small ships. 
The approach of additional troop transports is 
reported. 

Boston, March 23 — Several hostile ships 
have fired long-range shots at Fort Revere, 
according to a dispatch from Gloucester. The 
Governor has requested that the Massachusetts 
militia be returned for the defense of Boston. 

Washington, March 23 — The President has 
refused to allow the Massachusetts militia to 
return to Boston. Apparently he and his mili- 
tary advisers are convinced that the shots 
fired at Revere were intended to create panic 
and to weaken the defensive strength of our 
troops. 

New York, March 24 — An aerial scout, who 
succeeded in reconnoitering over the Sound, 
reports the enemy's strength in the neighbor- 
hood of 150,000 men, with large quantities of 
field artillery, perfectly equipped supply, am- 
munition, and hospital trains, and several bat- 
teries of the heavy siege type. The force at 

25 



ARE WE READY? 

Montauk Point, as nearly as can be estimated, 
is about a division of all arms. He observed 
several aeroplanes aloft apparently trying to 
locate American troops. He reports the main 
body of the hostile infantry pressing forward 
toward Saybrook. 

Our forces are known to be advancing rap- 
idly, and it is believed that a desperate at- 
tempt will be made to check the enemy's ad- 
vance at the Connecticut River. It is believed 
that the closing days of the month will see 
the first battle of the war being fought along 
the river between Hartford and Saybrook. 
Our total strength consists of one division of 
regulars, a cavalry brigade, one division of New 
York militia, and an incomplete division of 
Ohio and Wisconsin militia. Small arms have 
been secured from the arsenal on Governor's 
Island and Frankf ord Arsenal at Philadelphia 
sufficient for 10,000 volunteers. Without or- 
ganization or sufficient officers, these recruits 
have been rushed to the support of the little 
army advancing toward Saybrook. 

Washington, March 27 — The following offi- 
26 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

cial statement was issued by the Press Bureau 
at noon to-day: — 

The enemy has forced a crossing of the Con- 
necticut River at both Saybrook and Middle- 
town. Our troops are being forced northward, 
and before further resistance will be possible, 
they will have to join with the New England 
militia. The hostile invading force numbers 
in the neighborhood of 150,000 men, with 
an overwhelming superiority in artillery and 
equipment. Transports with heavy reinforce- 
ments are reported to be approaching. The 
New York municipal authorities have been 
notified that a successful defense of that city 
seems impossible. 

All of this is pure speculation, to be sure. 

Nevertheless, the speculation has a basis in 
facts which cannot be disputed. I have shown 
the manuscript of this chapter to several mili- 
tary experts and all agreed that under the con- 
ditions which I have imagined, with the city's 
fate hanging on a bare 50,000 men, and an 
unorganized, unofficered, and poorly equipped 

rt 



ARE WE READY? 

force of volunteers, capture would be inevit- 
able. They agreed that defense by citizens, 
under modern methods of warfare, would be 
hopeless, and pointed to the German opera- 
tions in Belgium as proof of this. They agreed 
that a tremendous indemnity would doubt- 
less be demanded, some placing it as high as 
$1,000,000,000, others still higher. None of 
them suggested that there was absurdity in the 
speculative treatment of the facts of our pre- 
paredness, and they were of one mind that if 
the events imagined should occur, the nation 
would face the immediate necessity of decid- 
ing whether it would pay an enormous mone- 
tary price for peace or whether it would enter 
into a long war to retake all that might be lost 
before hundreds of thousands of men and offi- 
cers could be armed^ trained, equipped, and 
put into the field. 

Among the men with whom I discussed this 
chapter was Henry L. Stimson, former Secre- 
tary of War. After a close study of the manu- 
script Mr. Stimson permitted me to quote him 
as follows: — 

28 




HENRY L. STIMSON 

Secretary of War, 1911-1913 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

I have read "An Attack on New York." There 
is nothing said in it which is outside the bounds of 
modern mihtary possibihty. The facts with refer- 
ence to our possible defensive force are accurately 
stated and the speculative treatment of them is 
logical. 

The facts of our military preparedness, as 
they apply to the possibility of an attack on the 
Atlantic Coast, have an even more alarming 
bearing on any speculation touching the safety 
of our Pacific Slope. 

Our General Staff and our War College have 
taken problem after problem, worked each one 
forward, backward, and sideways, conjured up 
every conceivable proposition touching attack 
and means of defense. In each case, eventually, 
the solution has been the same. 

We cannot defend the Pacific Slope against a 
trained hostile force as small as 100,000 men. 

It matters very little at what point the 
empire west of the Rockies might be invaded. 
In the opinion of mihtary experts who have 
worked on the problems of the military de- 
fense of that portion of our territory, a suc- 

29 



ARE WE READY? 

cessful invasion might have as its first object 
the region of San Francisco Bay, of Puget 
Sound, or of Los Angeles. 

There are many points on the Pacific Coast 
entirely outside the fire zone of the big harbor 
guns, where landing troops could be easily, 
quickly, and safely accomplished. 

It is probable that a foe would select the 
San Francisco region for the initial point of 
invasion, although there is little or nothing 
upon which to base a theory that a hostile 
power would not land its fighting men at two 
or even three points at once. 

With a portion of our fleet destroyed and 
the rest "bottled," transports could approach 
and land troops, guns, ammunition, and equip- 
ment at points either north or south of the 
city of San Francisco, — at HaK Moon Bay, 
on the peninsula, for example, — or north of 
San Francisco at some point on the Marin 
County shore line. Small bays and inlets 
furnish many accessible points. 

We could, and no doubt would, throw for- 
ward all our available line of defense across the 

30 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

peninsula, if the attack came from the south, 
and north of the city of San Francisco, if troops 
should be landed in that region. 

If the necessity came to-night for such a line 
or for both hues of defense, this is approximately 
what we should have at hand to go into it: — 

Three thousand regular troops in Cahfornia. 
^ We should have three regiments of infantry 
at the Presidio of San Francisco, and one regi- 
ment of cavalry at Monterey. All the coast 
artillery troops would be needed at the guns. 
The only other mobile troops available along 
the whole long shore line would be two regi- 
ments of infantry — one at Portland, Oregon, 
the other at Seattle, Washington. The total 
of the regular mobile forces on the whole 
Pacific Coast would be six regiments at peace 
strength, or about 4500 men. 
I About 3500 men, indifferently trained, in 
the organized militia, short of field guns, with- 
out the necessary ammunition, supply, and 
hospital trains, and lacking in other necessi- 
ties of actual field service, would make up our 
militia strength. The militia forces, estimated 

31 



ARE WE READY? 



from recent inspection figures, would be ap- 
proximately as follows: — 



Quartermaster Corps 

Subsistence Department 

Medical Department 

Corps of Engineers 

Ordnance . 

Signal Corps . 

Chaplains 

Cavalry . 

Field Artillery 

Infantry . 

Coast Artillery Corps^ 



2 officers, no men 

1 officer, no men 

20 officers, 90 men 

2 officers, no men 

2 officers, no men 

4 officers, 69 men 

3 

10 officers, 170 men 

15 officers, 300 men 

140 officers, 2000 men 

. 30 officers, 600 men 



Our militia force, therefore, though well 
supplied for religious ministration, would have 
not more than 3500 men in its organization, 
and this number would include many non- 
combatants, both officers and men. Without 
doubt, militia from the region of Los Angeles 
and San Diego, as well as mihtia from the 
States of Oregon and Washington, would not 
be sent to the region of San Francisco because 
of the necessity of local defense. 

An attack from the north by a strong force 
of trained men would, without question, result 
in the almost immediate capture of the north 
batteries of San Francisco Bay. 

^ Which cannot be counted in the mobile force. 
32 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK 

The power of a so-called coast-defense bat- 
tery is in exact ratio to the range of its heaviest 
gun within the radius of that gun's fire. 

It is right there that we have been so 
bhthely foohng ourselves, ever since some 
one called harbor-defense guns "coast-defense 
guns/' 

Without men defending them, the great guns 
mounted along our coast line are powerless 
against an attack by land. Big rifles, and 
heavy mortars, if big enough, heavy enough, 
and well handled, can prevent hostile entrance 
of our harbors. 

\ Little rifles, small guns, and many men, all 
of them well handled, the men well trained, are 
necessary to protect our coast line against 
invasion. 

' When we speak of having a regular army of 
about 5000 officers and 88,000 men, we have 
to consider that approximately 19,000 of these 
officers and men belong to the coast artillery, 
and that other thousands are stationed outside 
the territorial borders of the United States, 
leaving an actual mobile army within the 

33 



ARE WE READY? 

United States of not more than 1500 officers and 
30,000 men. The men who handle the big guns 
at the harbor entrances cannot be counted 
among those upon whom we can count to take 
part in an effort to repel an attack by land. 
The coast fortifications are local organizations, 
and are designed wholly to protect the more 
important of our seaports from direct naval 
attacks and raids, to guarantee against the 
landing of hostile troops at certain definite 
places, to safeguard our naval bases, in the 
absence of our own warships, to prevent the 
use of individual harbors and other landing- 
places as points which could be used for naval 
operations against us, and to secure places of 
safety for our war- vessels. 

The total stretch of our coast line is enor- 
mous, and the portions of it covered by the guns 
in our harbor defenses are very limited in com- 
parison with the unprotected intervals that lie 
between them. 

Should we lose control of the sea, as has been 
assumed, it would be possible for a hostile 
power to commence an invasion by the simple 

34 




BIG GUNS AT FORT WADSWORTH, STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. 



AN ATTACK ON NEW YORK ^ 

expedient of landing troops in one of these 
unprotected intervals, within easy striking 
distance of some important city. Should at- 
tack come from a nation having tens of thou- 
sands of reservists already within our borders, 
as part of our population, our fleet and our 
harbor defenses would be powerless to help us. 
Ultimate defense, therefore, can be accom- 
plished only by having a sufBcient mobile army 
equipped and trained to fight efficiently in any 
theater of war which an enemy may select. 
The complete defense of our coast line depends 
upon the combined efforts of our coast artillery 
and our mobile forces. 

This fundamental difference between the 
coast artillery and the mobile portions of the 
army has not yet been recognized by our legis- 
lators, though the point has been hammered 
at constantly for years by our military men. 
Eventually, if we are to have a really efficient 
regular army organization, the mobile forces 
must be free to move on instant notice, and 
should not be tied down by peace administra- 
tion in any particular locality. Our present 

35 



ARE WE READY ? 

army post system is a direct violation in many 
instances of this principle. When the violation 
lies in the fact that, as in some instances, one 
commanding officer is in charge of both mobile 
and stationary troops, such a system of admin- 
istration would, without doubt, break down in 
time of war. 

It is the opinion of men who have given 
years of careful study to the subject that, for 
the defense of our Atlantic Coast alone in time 
of threatened invasion, we should require at 
least 300,000 trained men of all arms, organ- 
ized into complete divisions. The question 
that army officers, cabinet officers, and mem- 
bers of our national legislature are asking is: — 

"How can we get them?" 



CHAPTER III 

A BOTTLED NAVY 

If our fleet is unbeatable, there is Kttle sense 
or reason in speculation as to our readiness to 
repel invasion, or excuse for a volume such as 
this. No foreign enemy, unless able to strike 
directly from or through the territory north or 
south of us, would venture to attack us by land 
until he had destroyed our war power on the 
sea. In regarding the question of our military 
preparedness, therefore, if we ignore the pos- 
sibility of direct attack by land, two assump- 
tions are possible: — 

We can assume that our fleet cannot be 
beaten. Or we can assume that it can. 

Unintelligent patriotism immediately jumps 
to the first premise and proclaims that military 
strength is unimportant, and that any agita- 
tion looking toward increasing our land forces 
is jingoism. 

Intelligent patriotism, the kind that is to be 
37 



ARE WE READY? 

found in our ablest soldiers and in many of our 
leading statesmen, holds to the second assump- 
tion, and insists that the safety of the nation 
demands that it be prepared both by land and 
sea. That is not to say that intelligent patriot- 
ism admits that our sea fighters can be con- 
quered, but that it is willing to assume, in seek- 
ing to find what absolute safety demands, that 
our fleet can be rendered powerless to defend 
our shores. 

This second assumption was the basis of the 
speculation in the preceding chapter. It is 
at the bottom of the contention that it will 
be profitable for the American people to con- 
sider the facts of our military preparedness. 
Whether or not this is warranted can be estab- 
lished only in actual warfare. In a discussion 
of our military strength, there is little space for 
an exhaustive analysis of our naval strength. 

There are, however, certain general grounds, 
which it may be well to indicate at this point, 
for assuming that a naval defeat is possible. 

Size alone cannot always be counted upon to 
win battles, as the schoolboy bully has often 

38 



A BOTTLED NAVY 

discovered to his amazement and chagrin. So 
long as the issues of modern warfare are de- 
cided by explosives and projectiles, battles will 
be won and lost by superiority of fire. Larger 
numbers and bigger guns, greater weight and 
superior agility, all are distinct advantages; 
but the ultimate test lies in how the guns are 
handled, how well trained are the men behind 
them, and whether the agility is converted into 
fighting efficiency. 

It is not our policy to excel all nations in 
greater numbers — of men, ships, or guns. We 
do make an effort, however, to keep ahead of 
all nations in the size of our guns. If under this 
policy we are able, under any circumstances, 
to maintain superiority of fire, both in volume 
and accuracy, we are justified in assuming that 
our navy is unconquerable. There are very 
definite grounds for seriously questioning such 
ability. 

Throughout our history, the general trend 
of our naval policy has been weak. It has been 
"off again, on again, back again, Finnegan," 
with us. 

39 



ARE WE READY? 

We started the "'little navy" policy im- 
mediately after the Revolution. Contrary to 
the advice of Washington, our navy was abol- 
ished and for eight years we had none. It was 
not until the outrageous decree of the Direc- 
tory of France in 1796, followed by the cap- 
ture of American vessels bound to and from 
English ports, that the necessity of fighting 
ships was driven home to us, and we established 
a sea power which forced peace. After the 
Constellation defeated the French frigate In- 
surgente, and strife on the sea was stopped, we 
went back again to our ''little navy" policy. 
We soon found ourselves paying tribute to the 
pirates of Algiers. Once more we provided 
ourselves with warships and eventually the 
piracy was put down. 

England's interference in 1807 with com- 
merce between the United States and conti- 
nental Europe should have warned us of the 
folly of our weak naval policy. Jefferson, with- 
out a navy, and with a distaste for war, per- 
suaded Congress to pass the Embargo Act as 
a substitute for a navy. One historian has said 

40 



A BOTTLED NAVY 

that "the cost of this experiment emptied the 
treasury, bankrupted the mercantile and agri- 
cultural classes, and ground the poor beyond 
endurance." 

By 1811, it was plain as the nose on our face 
that we were rapidly moving, totally unpre- 
pared, toward war. When war was declared in 
1812, we had six frigates and eight sloops, 
against the hundreds of ships in England's 
navy. We had three years of the War of 1812. 
We called out over 500,000 men and burdened 
ourselves with a large pension list. A hundred 
years after the war, there were still over two 
hundred widows on the pension roll of 1812. 
A strong naval policy at that time, if not actu- 
ally preventing the war, would very probably 
have limited its duration to a few weeks or 
months. 

It is interesting to consider the pension fig- 
ures in connection with the argument of the 
"little navy" men that we cannot stand the 
expense of a larger navy. Up to 1914, the cost 
of pensions, due to the Civil War, had been 
about $4,000,000,000. The pension appro- 

41 



ARE WE READY? 

priation for 1913 was in the neighborhood of 
$185,000,000. This is about $50,000,000 more 
than was appropriated in the same year for 
the navy. Since we began to be the United 
States of America, we have paid $1,250,000,- 
000 more for pensions than we have paid out 
for our navy. How much of this enormous sum 
a strong naval pohcy would have saved us can 
only be guessed at. 

No one seriously questions the assertion, 
frequently made, that had the Northern States 
in 1861 been possessed of an adequate navy, 
there would not have been four years of cruel 
and costly conflict. With a navy of adequate 
proportions, the Norfolk Navy Yard would 
have been seized, the Mississippi would have 
been blockaded, and the export of cotton and 
the importation of war material from other 
nations would have been prevented. The ex- 
ploits of the Alabama and other vessels which 
were built in English ports would have been 
impossible. 

If Russia in 1905 had been able to assemble 
a sufficiently strong fleet at Port Arthur, Japan 

42 



A BOTTLED NAVY 

would not have dared to send transports to 
China and to land troops. Turkey's naval 
weakness, in the recent war with Italy, opened 
the way for the Italian Navy to seize Tripoli 
without being punished. Turkey was unable 
to prevent Italy's command of the Mediter- 
ranean. 

To-day, England with a navy of superior 
strength, has been able to completely paralyze 
Germany's over-sea trade, which last year 
amounted to close to $4,000,000,000. Eng- 
land's navy is one of the great elements which 
experts are taking into consideration as a factor 
that will weigh heavily in bringing hostihties 
in Europe to an end. 

It should be remembered, however, that, 
with all her sea power, England, without the 
allied armies, was and is powerless to pre- 
vent Germany from overrunning Belgium and 
France, or any other territory open to direct 
attack by land. England's weakness is like 
the weakness of the professional bowler — 
abnormal development. If her strong arm 
should be broken, she would be out of the 

43 



ARE WE READY? 

running. In a game requiring the service of the 
weaker arm, she is outclassed by her rivals. 
That real war strength must include military 
as well as naval power is true of any nation. 
We are no exception. 

The official figures of 1914 show that the 
navy of the United States ranks third among 
the powers of the world, with France and Japan 
fourth and fifth. If our naval programme is 
carried out, the United States Navy soon will 
have dropped to fourth place, if, in actual 
fighting strength, it is not already there. These 
same figures give the French Navy 2406 offi- 
cers and the Japanese Navy 3230 officers, with 
the United States a bad fifth, with 1918 offi- 
cers. They show that in enlisted men we rank 
ahead of Japan by 2500 men and behind 
France by 10,000 men. Japan has 96 enlisted 
men per 1000 tonnage, compared with 69 men 
for the same tonnage in the American Navy. 
In ten years, Japan increased her naval expend- 
itures eleven-fold, while the expenditures of 
the United States, on its navy, only doubled 
within the fifteen years ending with 1914. The 

44 



A BOTTLED NAVY 

German expenditures tripled within the same 
period. 

Josephus Daniels, as Secretary of the Navy, 
gave voice to the principle that " we are not 
building against anybody." He expressed the 
belief that the war in Europe is going to ex- 
haust the resources of the countries engaged, 
and that there "is less likelihood of our hav- 
ing any trouble at any time in the future with 
those nations than there was before." This 
view concerns a point over which there is the 
widest divergence of opinion. It involves purely 
the question of size and weight. 

George von L. Meyer, Mr. Daniels's prede- 
cessor as Secretary of the Navy, takes an op- 
posite view. His opinion is this: — 

Better no navy whatever than a navy that is 
insufficient to our needs, and which only deceives 
the ignorant and inexperienced public as to its 
safety from attack or circumstances which would 
result in a paralyzing foreign commerce. 

It is impossible and unnecessary for this coun- 
try to have a large standing army in competition 
with those across the seas. But it is possible and 
necessary for us to have a navy that is superior 

45 



ARE WE READY? 

to that of any country, with the exception of 
England. 

To bring that about we must have a definite and 
continuous building programme of four battleships 
a year until we have secured an ultimate battle- 
ship strength of forty-eight ships of the line, with 
the necessary auxiliaries. 

We also need a merchant marine as an adjunct 
to the navy, which in times of peace will carry the 
mails and our products to the foreign markets of 
the world. 

England's merchant marine has been of incal- 
culable value to her in the present crisis, and, while 
with us, the transportation of troops by water 
would probably be limited, it would require a large 
fleet of merchant steamers, of which this country 
is very deficient, to transport, in case of war, merely 
the necessary quantities of coal, oil, naval supplies, 
and ammunition. 

We should insist on a strong navy. Battleships 
are cheaper than battles. The sea is a highway for 
a strong navy — a closed path to a weak one. In- 
vasion of a country cannot be effected in the face 
of a superior fleet. The fleet is the navy. In war 
nothing fails like failure. 

A powerful navy is the cheapest insurance. 

The factors that go into any nation's naval 
strength are ships, men, guns, ammunition, 

46 




GEORGE YON L. MEYER 

Secretary of the Navy, 1909-1913 



A BOTTLED NAVY 

and administration. If we insist that our naval 
programme, as it relates to the number, size, 
and armament of the ships which we maintain, 
is sufficient to guarantee our security, we have 
left the important elements of men, ammuni- 
tion, and administration. That we are short 
of both men and officers to man our war- 
vessels is generally admitted. Our shortage of 
blue- jackets is about 15,000, and we are to- 
tally without reserve strength to replace losses 
in battle, to man our second-line ships, or to 
supply the necessary men for manning the 
new ships which our naval programme calls 
for. 

That we are short of ammunition is another 
defect in our navy, which can be easily reme- 
died. We have but one torpedo, for example, 
for each tube in our navy. We could not give 
a foe "the other barrel" if he were looking 
right into the muzzle of our gun. We need not 
only enough ammunition for a protracted en- 
gagement, but a sufficient quantity in reserve 
to insure us against shortage during any rea- 
sonable period of naval conflict. It is a most 

47 



ARE WE READY? 

disconcerting thing to have the hammer of 
your gun go down on an empty chamber. 

Quick mobihzation, in time of war or threat- 
ened war, is as important at sea as on land. 
The persistent and continuous refusal of Con- 
gress to abolish our numerous and unnecessary 
navy yards is in line with the costly and useless 
maintenance of our scattered army posts. It 
is the opinion of naval experts that highest 
efficiency demands that we have not more than 
three naval bases on the Atlantic, and three 
on the Pacific Coast. On the Atlantic Coast, 
it is advocated that our war- vessels should be 
concentrated at Hampton Roads, Narragan- 
sett, and Guantanamo, and that the Pacific 
naval bases should be Puget Sound, San Fran- 
cisco, and Hawaii. 

Given sufficient ships, sufficient guns, and 
sufficient ammunition, and means of quick 
mobilization, the administration of our fight- 
ing craft, and the men aboard them, remains 
as the great element involving efficiency. 

Under our law, our Secretary of the Navy 
is not permitted to have a staff. He can, how- 

48 



A BOTTLED NAVY 

ever, if he desires, surround himself with aides 
who have had actual experience as sea fighters. 

Former Secretary Meyer was inclined to- 
ward administration through cooperation with 
advisers. Secretary Daniels showed an inclina- 
tion toward greater concentration of adminis- 
tration in the Secretary of the Navy himself. 
It was Secretary Meyer who detailed officers to 
investigate and to keep him informed on the 
four essential divisions of naval affairs; opera- 
tions, personnel, material, and inspection. 

Under Meyer, the work on the problems in- 
volved in operations was performed by the 
best strategists in the navy. Those entrusted 
with keeping the Secretary informed on mat- 
ters of personnel were kept at work on ques- 
tions concerning the supply of officers and 
men, and the selection of men to perform the 
varied duties that go into the making up of a 
fleet. Such matters as the type of ships needed, 
and the various engineering problems that go 
into the building of a warship, were turned over 
to the aide entrusted with questions of mate- 
rial. The Secretary of the Navy was kept fully 

49 



ARE WE READY? 

informed of the condition of ships in service 
and ships building through the aide in charge 
of inspection. 

Secretary Daniels, in large measure, aban- 
doned this system, as well as the custom of 
having five instead of four battleships in a 
division, with one constantly in dry dock for 
altering and repair. A naval division contains 
four battleships. The object of so dividing the 
fleet that there would be five was to provide 
a system whereby the battleships in each divi- 
sion might at all times be in the best possible 
condition. Something of a luxury, on the face 
of it, perhaps. So is an extra pair of trousers. 
But any tailor will testify to the better appear- 
ance, longer life, and all-round greater service- 
ability of a suit with an ''extra." 

A college football team would not be con- 
ceded the remotest chance of success if it went 
into a game without having had team and sig- 
nal practice. Although fleet practice is con- 
ceded to be an essential of efficient naval force, 
for some reason we seem to have taken a posi- 
tion that our fleet is an exception. We have 

50 



A BOTTLED NAVY 

not had our warships out for extensive prac- 
tice for three years. At the time of this writ- 
ing, a period of such training is in contempla- 
tion ; but if our fleet were called out to-day to 
repel a naval attack, there is not the question 
of a doubt that there would be a costly if not 
a disastrous lack of teamwork. The "pulling" 
of "bones" can work as much havoc on the sea 
as on the gridiron or diamond. 

Battle maneuvers on paper and in textbooks 
are all well enough in their way, but they are 
not enough to place a fleet on an even footing 
with an enemy of equal strength, well trained 
in the actual handling of his warships. 

We pride ourselves on the marksmanship 
of our gunners, but we are apt to overlook the 
fact that our high scores have been made under 
the most favorable conditions, — in calm seas, 
and without the strain that comes in battle. 
The recent naval battle off the coast of Chili 
was a clear demonstration of the value of the 
German system of holding fleet and target 
practice in rough seas and under the most un- 
favorable conditions. 

51 



ARE WE READY? 

The American people may ultimately decide 
how large our fleet is to be. For the present 
the immediate necessities are : — 

Sufficient men to handle the ships and guns 
which we now have; 

Sufficient men and officers to take the place 
of those lost in war and to man the ships now 
building; 

Sufficient ammunition to supply our guns 
and enough in reserve to supply new ships 
and to meet the demands of naval warfare; 

Supply ships, such as colliers, oil ships, and 
ammunition carriers, to meet the demands of 
our present fleet in war; 

Equipment for aerial scouting; 

Battle practice, sufficient to bring our sea- 
fighting machinery to maximum efficiency; 

A good general staff. 

It may be that we have an unbeatable navy. 
Whether we have or not, only a war with a 
first-class power will demonstrate. There 
surely is sufficient ground in a time of peace, 
such as this, however, to set us to wondering 
whether it is possible that the sea defense of 

52 



A BOTTLED NAVY 

our country roight be partially destroyed or 
bottled up in our harbors, to an extent which 
would enable an enemy to land troops on our 
shores and throw the burden of defense upon 
our military organizations. 

Many of us are falling into the error of as- 
suming that sea defense means stringing our 
warships along our coast line to prevent an 
enemy from nosing into our harbors, shelling 
our cities, or landing troops at unfortified 
points, and are losing sight of the fact that a 
war fleet to be most effective must strike an 
enemy in waters vital to him, outside the trade 
routes of its own nation, leaving the folks at 
home free to continue trade with their neigh- 
bors. 

As a nation, we are assuming that the Mon- 
roe Doctrine is an established pohcy, that the 
national interest demands that we shall con- 
trol the Pacific just as England now controls 
the Atlantic, and that we shall be able to 
prevent an enemy from landing troops on our 
shores. We are exhibiting a tendency to over- 
look the fact that the Monroe Doctrine is just 

53 



ARE WE READY? 

as strong as our fleet; that our power to enforce 
international agreements is as great as the 
weight of our guns; that our grip on the Pacific 
is as strong as the ships we can float on that 
ocean in case of necessity; and that whether we 
are "building against" any other nation or not, 
an enemy can land troops on our shores unless 
we have ships, guns, and men, sufficient in 
number and training to meet any emergency. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

I THINK the worst regular beating I ever got 
in my life was the result of the misapplication 
of a thoroughly sound military policy. 

In the small town of my youth there was a 
very healthy and an exceedingly active bunch 
of yoimg Americans. We gloried in the label of 
"The Hillside Avenue Gang." In the same 
town there was a "dude." He was our pet 
aversion, partly because we had a natural an- 
tipathy for the genus, and partly because he 
had related to our parents, with unnecessary 
detail, many things, including an assorted col- 
lection of words and phrases over which, so far 
as outsiders were concerned, we exercised the 
strictest censorship. 

Came a time of thirst for revenge; came long 
conferences of the whole as a strategy board; 
an advance force, to hold the "dude's" atten- 
tion — then an assault en masse. That was 

55 



ARE WE READY? 

it — a strategy as old as Napoleon, and a lot 
older. 

Largely because I had established a repu- 
tation as a middling straight shot, partly be- 
cause my armament was to be a carefully se- 
lected assortment of rather sickly and very 
squashy oranges, and partly because of a 
varied experience in matters such as that in 
hand, I was honored by being singled out for 
the advance force. I dishke to put the mark of 
approval on my military achievements; but I 
will say that I discharged in a highly efficient 
manner the duties laid upon me. My courage 
never faltered, my strategy ran like clockwork, 
and my range-finding was perfect. The open- 
ing shots, considered so vital to our cause, 
went home. 

But my support expected too much of me. 
Instead of taking advantage of the temporary 
confusion of the enemy, the main force hesi- 
tated, backed and filled, pulled this way and 
that, refused to heed the commands of the 
officers, until I had been overborne by superior 
speed, weight, and endurance (that ''dude" 

5Q 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

was no slouch), and the whole plan was spoiled, 
with the enemy in full possession of the field, 
before the gang had made up its mind on any- 
definite Kne of action. The great battle had to 
be left for another day. 

Now all of this has a real bearing on a very 
serious fact — that a courageous and efficient 
regular army of less than 90,000 men, no mat- 
ter how well armed, how well trained, how 
courageous, or how physically fit, is a mighty 
slim protection for this country. 

The traditional military policy of the United 
States contemplates a small regular army as a 
nucleus in time of peace for a great army of 
citizen soldiers as the ultimate force in time of 
war. 

This poHcy, based upon a theory declared by 
economists, statesmen, and military experts to 
be sound, both economically and politically, 
really dates back to the days following the 
Revolution. The foundation of our existing 
army was laid in the Act of September 29, 
1789, which recognized an *' establishment for 
the troops in the service of the United States" 

57 



ARE WE READY ? 

and required all officers and men in such an 
establishment to take the oath of allegiance. 

The first general organization of the army 
under the Constitution took place under the 
Act of April 30, 1790, which fixed the strength 
of non-commissioned officers and privates at 
1216, enlisted for a term of three years. 

The Miami expedition painfully demon- 
strated the inefficiency of so small an estab- 
hshment, and on March 3, 1791, another regi- 
ment was added with a strength of 912 men. 
St. Clair's defeat was followed in 1792 by an 
act which provided for three additional regi- 
ments of infantry and for filling the battalion 
of artillery and the two existing regiments of 
infantry then in service to the legal maximum. 

There is not space here to trace the growth 
of this little force into the present organization 
of the regular army. Through the record of 
our military legislation, however, there runs 
distinctly the policy of restricting the regular 
force of the United States to the smallest pro- 
portions consistent with efficiency and the 
national safety. Through all the records runs 

58 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

also that assumption that in time of war the 
small peace establishment shall be nothing 
more than the nucleus for great forces of citizen 
soldiery. 

How nearly we come to satisfactory appli- 
cation of our traditional policy in the matter of 
combination of professional fighting men and 
citizen soldiers will be taken up in succeeding 
chapters. 

It would appear to a man up a tree that, if 
the nation should suddenly be confronted by 
war, and should depend for its safety upon a 
trained military nucleus intended to expand 
into a great defensive force, that nucleus is a 
very important thing. 

Whether such a view is or is not correct, it is 
a fact that every year we spend in the neigh- 
borhood of ninety milKon dollars for less than 
ninety thousand men and officers in our regular 
army. 

Ninety million dollars for ninety thousand 
soldiers is more — per head — than any other 
nation in the world pays for its army — from 
two to five times more. (You can figure the 

59 



ARE WE READY? 

average cost of a United States regular, officer 
and private, anywhere from eight hundred to 
two thousand dollars a year, according to what 
you put in or take out of the War Department 
figures. If, for example, you charge the cost of 
building the Panama Canal and the River and 
Harbor Pork Barrel, the cost tag on your sol- 
dier will be away over a thousand dollars. But 
if you figure only what goes into his actual 
fighting ability, the average will be close to a 
thousand.) 

To be sure, the difference between the cost 
of our soldier and the cost of the soldier of other 
first-class nations can be charged largely, 
though not by any means wholly, to higher 
pay, higher cost of food, clothing, and other 
necessities that go into the soldier's mainten- 
ance, and the higher cost of his transportation. 

But even if the average cost of our soldier 
were not greater than that of the soldier of 
other great powers, there is still the fact that 
against the ninety thousand trained men of our 
regular army which we could immediately put 
into the field in time of war, including the 

60 




Copyright, Cndericood d- Undencood 

OUR THOUSAND-DOLLAR SOLDIER 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

thirty or forty thousand regulars we could 
promptly assemble on the continent, Germany, 
at the beginning of the present war, had four 
million trained men ready, and France nearly 
that many. 

As a business proposition, unless we admit 
that we are colossal spendthrifts, the conclu- 
sion has to be either that our theories of the 
home defense — or their application — are all 
wrong, or that there are prodigious leaks 
somewhere. 

The truth of it is that our theories are all 
right; that our application of them is all wrong; 
and that, for a nation with a reputation for 
hard-headed business sense, there are the most 
astonishing leaks. 

The problem of the organization of our regu- 
lar army has both a dynamic and a political 
aspect. It has been said that battles may be 
won and lost in the dome of the Capitol as well 
as on the field of battle. The military man may 
be at fault in proposing measures for adequate 
defense that would be intolerable to the Ameri- 
can citizen, while the political expert may pro- 

61 



ARE WE READY? 

pose systems and schemes of organization 
which may be ridiculously impracticable and 
ineffective. 

The ultimate test, of course, is the capa- 
city of the armed body to exert a superior mil- 
itary force in time to meet successfully any 
hostile pressure that is brought to bear against 
it. 

The numerical strength of our standing 
army is fixed at 100,000 men and officers. 

On June 30, 1914, according to the report of 
the Secretary of War, its actual strength was 
4701 officers, and 87,781 men, including 3809 
men in the Quartermaster Corps, and 4055 
men in the Hospital Corps. These figures rep- 
resent the peace footing of the United States 
Army. In time of war, an infantry company 
now having 65 men, should have 150 men; a 
cavalry troop, which now has 71 men, should 
have 100 men; an artillery battery, with a pres- 
ent strength of 133 men, should have 190 men. 
No provision in the way of reserve strength 
has been provided for filling out our army from 
its peace to its war propositions. These forces 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

are, and so long as our responsibilities outside 
the continental limits of the United States 
continue, must be divided into two parts: 
troops on service beyond the territorial Umits, 
and troops on service within the territorial 
Umits. At present it is necessary for us to main- 
tain forces in the Philippines, Panama, Oahu, 
Alaska, Guantanamo, and Porto Rico. 

Increasing responsibihties outside the conti- 
nental limits have necessitated distribution of 
our mobile forces approximately in the follow- 
ing manner : — 

In the Philippines, 3j regiments infantry, 2 regi- 
ments cavahy, 1 regiment field artillery, 2 com- 
panies engineers, 11 companies coast artillery 
(aggregate strength 9572). In the Hawaiian Is- 
lands, 3 regiments infantry, 1 regiment cavahy, 1 
regiment field artillery, 1 company engineers, 8 
companies coast artillery (aggregate strength, 
8195). In the Canal Zone, 1 regiment infantry, 3 
companies coast artillery (aggregate strength, 
2179). In China, 2 battalions infantry (aggregate 
strength, 849). In Alaska, 1 regiment infantry, 
(aggregate strength, 862). In Porto Rico, a 2-bat- 
talion regiment infantry (strength, 707). In United 
States, 17 regiments infantry, 11^2 regiments 

63 



ARE WE READY? 

cavalry, 3| regiments field artillery, 2 battalions 
engineers, 148 companies coast artillery (aggregate 
strength, 68,669). Troops en route and officers at 
other foreign stations, 1449. 

And that is not all. In the near future it is 
going to be necessary to take from the United 
States and put in the Philippines 1950 men of 
the coast artillery; in the Hawaiian Islands, 
6380 men, including infantry, field artillery, 
and coast artillery; and along the Panama 
Canal, 4774 men, including infantry, cavalry, 
field artillery, engineers, and coast artillery. 
When the necessary distributions are made, 
we shall have left within the continental limits 
of the United States, 12,610 coast artillery 
troops, and 28,692 mobile troops. This whole 
force is a little more than twice the size of 
the police force of the City of New York. 

All of those groups stationed in foreign pos- 
sessions, depend upon communication by sea 
with the central government. In time of war, 
therefore, they would have to be self-support- 
ing until the navy should have secured com- 
mand of the sea. Until naval supremacy should 

64 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

be decided, there would be no opportunity for 
their expansion. 

The contrary is the case with the troops 
within the territorial limits of the United 
States. Theoretically, our troops at home, 
while being maintained on a plan to insure high- 
est efficiency together with maximum mobility, 
should have the backing of a condition which 
would make certain speedy and orderly expan- 
sion from the body of the citizenship into what- 
ever force an emergency might demand. 

Our regular army, while serving as a na- 
tional police force, for administration and for 
instruction and training of citizen forces, should 
be able, in time of sudden need, to do for 
the nation what the Belgian army did for the 
Allies — to serve as the line of immediate 
defense, the stopgap to provide the few vital 
days of assembling a great defensive force of 
citizens. 

With ninety million dollars to spend, it would 
seem that we should be able to provide our- 
selves with a regular army which would be the 
last word in efficiency. Yet if the need came 

65 



ARE WE READY? 

to-night, as has been shown, we could put into 
the field a mobile force of a scant 32,000 men, 
indifferently equipped in artillery and with a 
supply of artillery ammunition hardly suffi- 
cient for a day's engagement. 

Behind this condition are wholly avoidable 
efficiency wastes and money wastes. The 
necessity of distributing troops in widely sep- 
arated places and at great distances, the con- 
sequent cost of transportation of men, equip- 
ment, and supplies, with the added necessity, 
because of climatic conditions, of frequent 
changes of troops — all are highly expensive, 
and operate against quick mobilization. There 
is no doubt that there is a greater or less degree 
of waste in the routine of handling the admin- 
istration and distribution of our regular forces; 
but since measures of economy and efficiency 
in these matters do not threaten to deprive 
any budding or blossomed statesman of his 
seat in Senate or House, constant progress is 
being made toward putting technical detail 
upon a thoroughly economic basis. 

The big leak is the army post. 
66 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

The army-post graft is first cousin to the 
navy-yard graft. 

Genuinely patriotic American voters are 
really the grafters. Their representatives in 
Congress are the instruments. 

The army post has become a big leak, ri- 
diculously apparent and v/hoUy avoidable, by 
reason of the desire of pohticians in Congress 
to please a very limited portion of the folks 
who put them there, and to lend color to their 
"district loyalty" campaign utterances at 
what time they desire to be put there again. 

Once we had big Indian troubles — people 
being terrorized, and scalped, and killed, and 
tortured in a lot of places. Now a murder by 
some whiskey-crazed redskin gets a "scare- 
head" in our metropolitan dailies. 

Once we estabhshed many rough garrisons 
whose chief function was to protect white peo- 
ple from Indians. Now we have many elabo- 
rate army posts whose chief function is to make 
the green grass grow all around. They represent 
a great investment, on which no interest accrues ; 
and they are very expensive to maintain. 

67 



ARE WE READY? 

Back in 1911, along toward the close of the 
year, a Secretary of War, in his report to the 
President, made this statement: — 

The mobile army is distributed among forty- 
nine posts in twenty-four States and Territories. 
Nearly all of these posts have been located in their 
present situations for reasons which are now totally 
obsolete or which were from the beginning purely 
local. . . . Comparatively few of them are in posi- 
tions suited to meet the strategic needs of national 
action or defense. . . . The posts have universally 
been constructed upon apian which involves a maxi- 
mum initial cost of construction and a maximum 
cost of maintenance both in money and men. 

Now this Secretary of War — it was Henry 
L. Stimson — chanced to be a Republican. So, 
in accordance with our time-honored political 
traditions, a Democratic House started after 
him, passing a resolution demanding to know 
what he meant, if, by chance, he meant any- 
thing. 

Some observers of the period will tell you 
that that House resolution was intended to 
scare the Secretary of War away from the 
army posts. However that may be, it is no 

68 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

secret that he was besieged by Senators and 
Congressmen, who, in their great wisdom and 
long experience in such matters, urged him 
against the folly of a reply, begging that if he 
were really bent on making a chump of him- 
self, he would refrain from dragging in posts 
in their particular neck of the woods. It is 
no secret, either, that he told them all: "You 
have asked for facts; now you are going to get 
facts" — or words to that effect. 

It is tradition that if you wish to hide any- 
thing from the American people, the best place 
to put it is in an official report. It is too bad; 
for the official accounts of what followed are 
most interesting. 

To the demand that he give "the names of 
all army posts which have been located in their 
present situations for reasons which are now 
totally obsolete," Stimson rephed by calling 
the roll. He named Fort Apache, Arizona; 
Boise Barracks, Idaho; Fort Clark, Texas; 
Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming; Fort Douglas, 
Utah; Fort Huachuca, Arizona; Fort Leaven- 
worth, Kansas; Fort Mackenzie, Wyoming; 



ARE WE READY? 

Fort Meade, South Dakota; Fort Missoula, 

Montana; Fort Robinson, Nebraska; Fort 

Riley, Kansas; Fort Sill, Oklahoma; Fort Snell- 

ing, Minnesota. 

When the Secretary of War came to the 

straight congressional demand that he declare 

the intentions of the War Department as to 

legislation it would urge, he came back with 

straight talk. He said — what to-day military 

experts agree in — that 

If the mobile army is to be eflficient its distribu- 
tion must meet the following requirements: — 

1. It must be favorable for the tactical training 
of the three arms combined (infantry, cavalry, and 
field artillery). 

2. It must be favorable for the rapid concentra- 
tion of the army upon our northern or southern 
frontier, or upon our eastern or western seaboard. 

3. It must favor the best use of the army as a 
model for the general military training of the Na- 
tional Guard. 

4. It must favor the use of the Regular Army as 
a nucleus for the war organization of the National 
Guard and such volunteer forces as Congress may 
authorize to meet any possible military emergency. 

5. The distribution must favor economical ad- 
ministration with the view of developing the maxi- 

70 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

mum return for the money appropriated for mili- 
tary purposes. 

6. The distribution must permit a peace organ- 
ization which will also be effective in war; that is, 
an organization which will permit a prompt expan- 
sion in time of war by means of a system of reserve. 

The conditions back of the recommendations 
made in 1911 have not materially changed. 
The fact that close to $6,000,000 could be saved 
the American people annually by the compara- 
tively simple process of the concentration and 
redistribution of regular troops is still a fact. 

Yet only four minor posts of the forty-nine 
have been abandoned. The United States 
Army, what of it is not in the Philippines, 
Panama, Oahu, Alaska, Guantanamo, and 
Porto Rico, is still scattered in little groups 
averaging not more than six hundred men each 
and without a possibility of getting together 
frequently for effective tactical training. 

Take Fort D. A. Russell, Wyoming, as an 
example. It cost about $5,000,000 to build 
Fort D. A. Russell. The soldiers stationed there 
are, for the most part, recruited in New York; 

71 



ARE WE READY? 

they are fed from the Mississippi Valley, clothed 
from New York, and when they are discharged, 
they are returned to New York at our expense. 
We think we are a mighty business-like nation. 
Yet a nice little padded coop would likely be 
recommended for any one of us who would 
build a costly factory at Steubenville, Ohio, 
and persist in a poUcy of frequently paying 
transportation to and from New York of la- 
borers to run it on a plan that would mean 
maximum expense and minimum profit. 

The reasons for the army-post waste are the 
same as they have been for twenty years : Army 
leaders grown old under the scattered post sys- 
tem; the tradition that a post commander to 
get favorable mention must maintain the 
"beautiful park" idea, with its extensive roads, 
walks, gardens, lawns, and independent and 
costly systems of lighting, water, and sewage; 
the argument that abandonment would mean 
throwing away immense sums already in- 
vested; and finally, the influence of affected 
communities, exerted through members of 
Congress and backed by pleas ranging from 

72 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

"There are forty thousand Indians near this 
point" to "The people of this community are 
peaceful, law-abiding, hospitable and patriotic"; 
and the plaint of the legislator himself that 
"We would find it difficult to square ourselves 
with our constituency if our promises are not 
made good." The character and magnitude of 
the protest that goes up whenever an army 
post is threatened can be found by anyone 
who will go through the records. 

So, year after year. Congressmen and Sena- 
tors have heard from home. They have played 
politics and we have our useless and wasteful 
posts. 

There has been much muck-raking of mem- 
bers of Congress over army-post expenditures, 
much heated protest against log-rolling in the 
interest of individual communities. Yet the 
further one gets into the army-post records, 
the clearer it becomes that if muck-raking of 
Senators and Congressmen is to be undertaken 
it will be necessary to muck-rake a very large 
majority of both houses. 

73 



ARE WE READY? 

And right there is a great national weakness. 

They all do it. 

Once in a while you come upon some one 
who did n't do it; and a few pages on you find 
that he did n't last long. 

When the man whom we send to represent 
us in Congress is called upon to decide ques- 
tions in connection with an inland waterway 
or a harbor, he puts the consideration of his 
local constituency first; when tariflP questions 
arise and are to be legislated upon, he hears 
from back home and acts accordingly; when 
the abandonment of an obsolete, useless, and 
wasteful army post is advocated, he hears from 
the comparatively small local community 
affected, and fights it. He wants to stay in 
Congress and needs votes to keep him there. 

It is n't his fault. It is our fault. Rather it 
is the fault of our system. So long as in casting 
our vote we place our home town, our home 
county, or our home State above the interest 
of the nation, and cling to the tradition that 
our executive officers have no business in the 
halls of Congress, we are not going to be justi- 

74 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

fied in holding our representatives to account if 
they continue to throw away our money. 

A candidate for the national legislature in a 
district where the vote is close cannot declare 
that he places the welfare of the nation above 
the interests of his district and win the place. 
We voters have proven it time and again. 
Kent, of California, to be sure, is one notable 
exception now in Congress. Politically he is a 
freak. He holds his place not by reason of but 
in spite of his patriotic utterances. 

It would be a fine thing if we could bring our- 
selves to send to Congress men who would be 
free to exercise a real executive abihty, free to 
consider the interest of the nation first. 

The millennium is going to be a fine thing, 
too. Just now, human nature stands in the 
way of both. We can't change that by writing 
pieces for the paper. But we can, if we want, 
give our representatives in Congress a chance 
to hear the views of experts who have no local 
obligations and whose whole service is in the 
interest of the nation. 

The proposition that our executives and our 
75 



ARE WE READY? 

legislators have no business to sit down and 
deliberate together has become almost a reli- 
gion with us, since it was propounded by Mon- 
tesquieu back in 1730. There is no place here 
for an argument as to whether this is as it 
should be. It is a fact, though, that this idea 
has been abandoned by Great Britain and by 
France and that it has no place in the Govern- 
ment of Switzerland, 

By statute, or by the simpler process of reso- 
lution, we can, if we want, give the President 
the right to appear on the floor of either house 
and to say what he thinks should be said with- 
out exposing himseK to gibes and the accusa- 
tion that he is making a "grand-stand play." 
By the same process we can give the same 
opportunity to each member of the Cabinet. 

If we want to, we can go even further than 
this. We can give the President the right to 
introduce bills; to prepare and introduce a 
budget containing estimates of the expenses 
of the Government for a coming year; and we 
can give Cabinet members the right to defend 
on the floor of either house the portions of 

76 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

the President's budget involving their depart- 
ments. 

We could, of course, even go further, and 
prohibit the addition of items to the Executive 
budget without the concurrence of the Presi- 
dent and Congress. 

Whether we will want to do all this, or any 
part of it, or none of it, we cannot dodge the 
fact that we are wasting milhons on our army. 

To stop this waste and to secure maximum 
eflSciency, military experts agree that the iSrst 
step should be legislation that would concen- 
trate the army in eight large posts of approxi- 
mately equal size and located where transpor- 
tation and supply would be most economic. 

The following grouping of detachments of 
all arms is being advocated by our ablest miH- 
tary men: — 

Two or three groups covering the Atlantic 
seaboard on the line between the St. Lawrence 
and Atlanta. 

Two, possibly three, groups covering the 
Pacific seaboard, on the line between Puget 
Sound and Los Angeles. 

77 



ARE WE READY? 

Two groups between the Great Lakes and 
the Rio Grande, which would serve as first 
reserve and which would supply central organ- 
izations around which could be built organiza- 
tions of the National Guard, and, in time of 
war, volunteer forces in the interior of the 
continent. 

It is estimated that by this means alone a 
total yearly saving of more than $5,500,000 
would be accomplished. That very large sums 
are now invested in the scattered posts is true. 
The real estate occupied by these posts is valu- 
able. It is the judgment, however, of men who 
have spent years on our military problems that 
it should be possible to refund this investment 
and largely to finance the redistribution of the 
army from moneys made available through the 
sale of government property which is no longer 
needed for military purposes. These men argue 
that there is no reason why the United States 
Government should not adopt the policy of the 
wise business man who tears down an anti- 
quated building, representing a considerable 
original investment, in order to make room for 

78 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

a much more economical and profitable 
structure. 

There is becoming more and more evident a 
growing conviction that we should have some- 
thing more than our regular army and our 
incomplete mihtia organizations. It is being 
asserted with increasing frequency that we 
should have a citizen force wholly adequate to 
protect the nation in any emergency, and that 
we can have such a force without giving ground 
an inch on our traditions and our institutions. 

It is not so much that the application of our 
military theories has been all wTong, as stated 
in a previous paragraph, as it is that there has 
been scarcely any application at all. 

It has been shown that in a time of desperate 
necessity we could, perhaps within six weeks, 
put into the field a force of not more than 
150,000 men made up, for the most part, of 
regulars and groups of militia organized with- 
out uniformity, incompletely trained, short of 
artillery, and practically without the necessary 
auxiliary arms of the service. That pitifully 
small force would represent about all that we 

79 



ARE WE READY? 

have done toward applying the poHcy laid 
down in the days of the Revolution. We 
should have no officers for training new levies, 
and no means for organizing and handling the 
citizens who might enlist. 

The time necessary for the training of volun- 
teer forces depends upon whether or not there 
are trained instructors available. With trained 
officers at hand, and with the necessary sup- 
plies, implements, and equipment in reserve, 
bodies of raw recruits could probably be trans- 
formed into efficient fighting groups within six 
months. 

But in a situation, such as we have to-day, 
where all officers available would be hardly 
sufficient for the regular army and the militia 
organization, and where the leaders and the 
men comprising volunteer forces would have to 
stumble toward efficiency through the desper- 
ate and costly school of experience in actual 
battle, months, even years, and thousands of 
hves needlessly wasted, would be the expendi- 
ture required to transform the inexperienced 
soldiers into efficient, defensive units. 

80 



THE HOLE IN OUR POCKET 

Probably there was never a greater demon- 
stration of this than during the Civil War. 
Between 1861 and 1865, two extemporized 
armies gradually developed while in conflict. 

In 1861 both officers and men were unready 
for the tasks demanded of them. There was 
lack of cohesion between the units making up 
regiments and armies, and lack of cooperation 
between officers. At Bull Run, one force was 
disorganized by defeat, the other by victory, 
and it was not until 1863 that the armies could 
be regarded as complete and effective mili- 
tary organizations. Had one or the other of 
the armies been made up of men previously 
trained, it is the opinion of those who have 
given close study to that war that it would 
have been speedily ended. 

The private cannot become a good private 
until his captain is a good captain. The captain 
cannot become a good captain until his colo- 
nel is a good colonel. And so it goes. Training 
of officers and men in actual conflict, without 
any preliminary training whatever, must be 
appallingly wasteful in both money and men. 

81 



ARE WE READY? 

Under present conditions of warfare, it is 
hardly to be imagined that any first-class na- 
tion would attack us by land with anything 
but trained forces. Yet we have devised no 
means of filling out our professional organiza- 
tion to large proportions in time of need. 

The big hole in the pocket where we carry 
our army funds, of course, is the lack of any 
regular system of reserve. The professional 
soldier, the fighter who enters the army for a 
living, is the most expensive unit of defense a 
nation can have. The citizen soldier, who is 
called to the colors only in time of war, or for 
short periods of training, is the cheapest. A 
reasonable combination of the professional and 
the citizen soldier, in accordance with the es- 
tablished military policy of the United States, 
would give us, for our ninety millions, a defen- 
sive strength that would compare not unfavor- 
ably with that of any first-class nation. 



CHAPTER V 

OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

One of the peculiarities of the effect here at 
home of the upheaval in Europe during the 
early months of the war was a rapidly devel- 
oped beUef in some quarters that matters per- 
taining to our own military fitness should not 
be discussed in polite society. We were warned 
time and again that to talk frankly among 
ourselves on this subject is an international 
indelicacy, and may not only shock some 
other higher up among the nations, but will 
also weaken our position as the world's great 
example of peace, purity, piety, and prosperity, 
when the day arrives when we shall venture to 
take those awful, barbarous foreign cut-throat 
nations by the hands, or hind legs, and lead 
them, or drag them, into ways of righteousness. 

No doubt, those of us who have subscribed 
to this sort of propaganda, should we discover 
that that horrible, common brawl between 

83 



ARE WE READY? 

that low-down man and his wife next door all 
came about because the old man found a cock- 
roach in his soup, would immediately throw all 
our own bug exterminators, our soup tureens, 
and ladles into the garbage can, for fear that 
their presence in our possession might interfere 
with our showing our quarreling neighbors how 
silly it is to start a fight over cockroaches and 
soup. 

It used to be believed that to say "limb" 
when "leg" was meant kept boys and girls from 
being led into wickedness. As our notions have 
broadened, we have come more and more to 
call things by their right names. Right now, 
we are the spectators of a frightful war, be- 
tween highly cultured peoples. To pull the 
long "better-than-thou" face of purity and 
piety is rank hypocrisy, and every Tom, Dick, 
and Harry of us knows it. There is no "limb" 
about it. It is plain "leg." 

"We are notorious in our national tendency to 
go up and down the world with a very discern- 
ible chip on our shoulder. We do not hesitate, 
or at least we have not hesitated in the past, 

84 




1 \. 




< 



I H 

i J 
3 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

to meddle in the affairs of other nations, — of 
Russia, or China, or Japan, — and we get 
"sassy" as can be the instant there is the faint- 
est suggestion that an outsider might, in the 
remotest possibihty, resent our interference 
or tread on our pet poHtical, commercial, or 
industrial corns. 

We are a healthy and very courageous sort 
of folk, mighty willing to fight if we have to. 
Yet some of us insist, even when people are 
fighting to the death all around us, and it has 
been frightfully demonstrated that war can no 
longer be regarded only as a thing of the bar- 
barous past, that it is harmful and indeHcate 
to inquire what, if anything, we tote in our 
national hip pocket. 

One of our blossoming statesmen, boaster 
of a greater stock of "clarion tones" than of 
information, is quoted as having dismissed the 
whole subject of our preparedness to defend 
ourselves in the following "ringing words": 
"Back of our splendid regular army is our 
militia; and back of our militia is the sturdy, 
glorious manhood of the nation." 

85 



ARE WE READY? 

The facts leave no room for doubt that 
somebody should have led the gentleman ten- 
derly away and explained to him that the regu- 
lar army really is not splendid; and that even 
if it were, the miHtia should not be back of it; 
and have advised him to read George Wash- 
ington on the subject of the value of sturdy, 
untrained citizens in time of war. 

In the opinion of every military expert who 
has made public his views on the subject from 
the time of Washington to the present, the 
militia should not be thought of as being back 
of the regular army, but one with the regular 
army. The fact that we have not carried out 
the fundamental principle of our military pol- 
icy, that of bringing the professional and the 
citizen soldiery into uniformity of organiza- 
tion, equipment, and training, is one of our 
two great military weaknesses. The other one 
is our total lack of reserve strength, a subject 
which will be taken up further on. The lack 
of uniformity between the militia and the regu- 
lar army can be charged almost entirely to a 
failure to build up an efficient cooperation be- 

86 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

tween the individual States and the Federal 
Government. No doubt this failure is due en- 
tirely to thoughtlessness and an incomplete re- 
alization of the peril that hes in this slipshod 
method of applying the principles of our mili- 
tary theories. 

Washington sounded a warning against just 
such a condition at the close of the Revolution. 
Back of what he said were years of bitter expe- 
rience. In taking leave of the Governors of the 
States before resigning his commission, writ- 
ing with the experience of a soldier and with 
the foresight of the real statesman, he said 
this: — 

There are four things, which I humbly conceive, 
are essential to the well-being, I may even venture 
to say, to the existence of the United States, as an 
independent power. 

First. An indissoluble union of the States under 
one federal head; 

Second. A sacred regard to public justice; 

Third. The adoption of a proper peace establish- 
ment; and 

Fourth. The prevalence of that pacific and 
friendly disposition among the people of the United 

87 



ARE WE READY? 

States, which will induce them to forget their local 
prejudices and policies; to make those mutual con- 
cessions which are requisite to the general pros- 
perity; and in some instances, to sacrifice their 
individual advantages to the interest of the com- 
munity. . . . 

It is necessary to say but a few words on the 
third topic which was proposed, and which regards 
particularly the defense of the Republic; as there 
can be little doubt that Congress will recommend 
a proper peace establishment for the United States, 
in which a due attention will be paid to the impor- 
tance of placing the militia of the Union upon a 
regular and respectable footing. If this should be 
the case, I would beg leave to urge the great advan- 
tage of it in the strongest terms. The militia of 
this country must be considered as the palladium 
of our security, and the first effectual resort in case 
of hostihty. It is essential, therefore, that the same 
system should pervade the whole; that the forma- 
tion and discipline of the militia of the continent 
should be absolutely uniform, and that the same 
species of arms, accouterments, and military appa- 
ratus should be introduced in every part of the 
United States. No one, who has not learned it 
from experience, can conceive the difficulty, ex- 
pense, and confusion, which result from a contrary 
system, or the vague arrangements which have 
hitherto prevailed. 

88 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

Notwithstanding Washington's warning and 
similar ones by mihtary men ever since his 
time, although the machinery for securing uni- 
formity in the organization of our military 
forces has been provided, the militia organiza- 
tions, except in rare instances, are designed 
primarily for the immediate needs of the in- 
dividual States, and very little thought is given 
to bringing them to a point where they would 
be really efficient if called upon to act in the 
defense of the nation. 

Twelve years have elapsed since the passage 
of the militia law, and in some instances the 
important provisions of that law, especially re- 
lating to raising the standard of efficiency and 
to providing well-rounded organization, are not 
nearer to being complied with to-day than 
they were when the law was passed. The act 
requiring conformity in organization between 
the regular army and the militia was passed in 
1903 and permitted five years for the carrying- 
out of its provisions. At the end of that time 
the period was further extended to January 21, 
1910. 



ARE WE READY? 

In his report for the year 1913, General A. L. 
Mills, Chief of the Division of Militia Afifairs, 
discussing this point said this: — 

Properly balanced divisions are so vital to the 
successful use of troops, that until the present de- 
ficiency in auxiliary arms is removed it constitutes 
a grave peril. This fact cannot be realized by the 
organized militia itself at present, or an insistent 
demand from that body would result. There is but 
one obstacle that at present stands in the way of 
obtaining the desired result, and that is the indif- 
ference of the organized militia itself to the sub- 
ject. Since the members of this body are engaged 
during the day in making a living, and devote only 
a certain number of evenings a week to the military 
profession, and since there is so much ground for 
them to cover in performing their routine military 
duties, naturally the work immediately in hand 
fully occupies their available time, and large ques- 
tions, such as the one now under consideration, are 
in general left in each State to the organized mili- 
tia officer who is practically continuously engaged 
in military work. I refer to the adjutant-general. 
This man in most States devotes his entire time to 
the organized militia; he is the governor's military 
adviser and he largely shapes military legislation 
in the State. It may be said, therefore, that in a 
great measure the safety of the United States de- 

90 



¥■ 




'^"^\4^W> 




OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

pends upon having balanced divisions and that the 
securing of these balanced divisions depends upon 
the forty-eight adjutants-general. This is a fact 
seldom realized. There is no doubt in my mind 
that were these gentlemen to fully appreciate the 
great responsibility that is upon them, and were 
they to lay the situation before the members of the 
organized militia in their respective States, frankly 
and earnestly, entering in a whole-souled way into 
the work, the present difficulties would disappear, 
and in a short time we should emerge from the seri- 
ous danger that now threatens us. 

The peace establishment which Washington 
urged, we have secured, and having secured 
it and brought it to a state where it is moder- 
ately well equipped and thoroughly well trained, 
through sheer thoughtlessness we have been un- 
fair enough to place upon it the greater portion 
of the miHtary responsibility of the nation. 

The regular army is the national military 
hired man. At present among its most impor- 
tant duties are: — 

To supply peace garrisons for foreign posses- 
sions of the United States; 

To supply peace garrisons for fortified har- 
bors, and naval bases; 

91 



ARE WE READY? 

To prevent naval raids which under mod- 
ern methods of warfare may precede a declara- 
tion of war, and which may determine the ini- 
tiative by giving the enemy a convenient base 
for invading operations; 

To supply a mobile reserve prepared to rein- 
force foreign garrisons in case of insurrection 
and disorder; 

To furnish forces sufficient for the occupa- 
tion of foreign territory where treaty rights or 
established national policies are threatened; 

To be able to cooperate with the navy in the 
formation of joint expeditions to protect the 
foreign interests of the United States and its 
citizens; 

To be ready to mobilize on instant notice 
and to strike quickly and successfully at the 
outbreak of war, before an army of citizen sol- 
diers can be concentrated; 

To maintain itself as an experimental model 
for the volunteer army, to demonstrate the 
application of military practices, and to serve 
as a means of educating and training and organ- 
izing citizen forces. It must be a school of mili- 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

tary theory and practice, not only for the de- 
velopment of soldiers, but for the development 
of officers who will be capable of assuming im- 
portant duties in war; 

To unify a military doctrine and policy 
which must permeate the entire national army 
if it is to succeed in war; 

To prepare an advance for equipment, trans- 
portation, and supply of a great citizen army 
in time of war; 

To act for the peace and safety of any com- 
munity within the borders which may require 
its services. 

It may be that it is high time for us to de- 
cide whether it is safe, so far as we ourselves 
are concerned, and whether it is fair to our mili- 
tary hired man, to place upon him, in addition 
to keeping our home in order, and taking his 
part in preventing our neighbors from be- 
coming too presuming, practically the whole 
responsibility of defending the home against 
other fighting men, perhaps twenty or thirty 
times his size. If we decide that there is peril 
as well as injustice in our present handling of 

93 



ARE WE READY? 

our military resources, the way out is most 
simple: — 

First: By legislation we can remedy the 
defects in the nucleus about which we can 
build an adequate defensive strength. 

Next: We can coordinate the militia and the 
professional organization. 

Finally: We can utilize our tremendous but 
undeveloped military resources in men and 
material. 

The means by which the regular army organ- 
ization may be perfected have been described 
in a previous chapter. 

What should we do with the mihtia? 

If it is to form a part of a peace army which 
in time of war is to be eflBcient, what must be 
required of it.^ 

The infantry makes up the bulk of an army. 
Infantry is made up of men whose means of 
transportation is their own feet, and who carry 
with them their own weapons, ammunition, 
shelter, and food. On the march or in battle, 
the infantry bears the heaviest burdens, and 

94 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

sustains the heaviest losses. Military genius in 
our country organizes the infantry into bri- 
gades of three regiments each, commanded by 
a brigadier-general. Three battalions make 
up each regiment. The regiment is commanded 
by a colonel. Each battalion consists of fom: 
companies, each commanded by a captain and 
two heutenants. In each regiment there is a 
band, a machine-gun platoon with two auto- 
matic guns, and a few mounted scouts. 

The fighting arm of first importance asso- 
ciated with the infantry is the field artillery. 
The largest field artillery unit which we have is 
the regiment, commanded by a colonel. The 
regiment consists of two battahons. The bat- 
talion is made up of three batteries of four 
guns, each in command of a captain and four 
lieutenants. The artillery is of various kinds, 
according to the work for which it is designed. 
We have horse artillery, which may accom- 
pany the cavalry, for example, and mounted 
artillery with guns of a type that may be dis- 
mounted and carried on pack mules. Next to 
the field artillery in importance as a fighting 

95 



ARE WE READY? 

arm comes the cavalry. In the cavalry the 
three subdivisions of the regiment are known 
as squadrons and instead of companies there 
are troops. As other auxihary arms are the 
engineers, the signal corps, the medical depart- 
ment, including ambulance companies and 
field hospitals, and the quartermaster corps for 
the furnishing of transportation, rations, and 
shelter, and which has charge of the payment 
of troops. 

The branch of the army not included in the 
mobile forces is the coast artillery intended for 
operating the great guns which command the 
entrances to important harbors. 

The smallest military unit which contains 
all arms of the service, and all branches of the 
staff is the division. The division, therefore, is 
the smallest unit capable of independent ac- 
tion. A complete infantry division should com- 
prise: — 

Headquarters, 27 men; three brigades of 
infantry, 17,244 men; one regiment of cavalry, 
1308 men; one brigade of light artillery, 2391 
men; one pioneer battalion of engineers, 514 

96 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

men; one field battalion of signal troops, 176 
men; commander of trains, military poKce, etc., 
15 men; one ammunition train, 216 men; one 
supply train, 194 men; one sanitary train, 570 
men; one engineer train, 10 men. The ag- 
gregate, ^^,Q65 men, is made up as follows 
Combatant officers, 620; medical officers, 94 
chaplains, 12; combatant enlisted men, 20,673 
enlisted men, hospital corps, 826 ; enlisted men, 
quartermaster corps, 421; civilians, 9; veteri- 
narians, 10. 

t These figures are based on long experience of 
all the nations of the world, and although the 
units in the armies of diflferent nations vary in 
size, and are called by diflferent names, the 
proportions approximate very closely. 

A study of the experience of nations in mod- 
ern warfare, in an examination of the condi- 
tions of our militia, led the Army War College 
and the Divisions of Military Afifairs very 
recently to establish twelve divisions of organ- 
ized militia. This was a step in advance. But 
an examination of the condition of the militia 
shows a great variation in the proportions of 

97 



ARE WE READY? 

the various arms of the service. No two are 
alike, and not one is wholly complete. With 
the exception of the sixth division (New York), 
where rapid progress is being made, there is 
not a complete division of militia within sight. 
The militia divisions have been established as 
follows: — 

Fifth Division — Headquarters, Boston; 
Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massa- 
chusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut. 

Sixth Division — Headquarters, Albany; 
New York. 

Seventh Division — Headquarters, Harris- 
burg; Pennsylvania. 

Eighth Division — Headquarters, Washing- 
ton; New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Vir- 
ginia, West Virginia. 

Ninth Division — Headquarters, Atlanta; 
North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, 
Florida. 

Tenth Division — Headquarters, Nashville; 
Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi. 

Eleventh Division — Headquarters, Colum- 
bus; Ohio, Michigan. 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

Twelfth Division — Headquarters, Chicago; 
lUinois, Indiana. 

Thirteenth Division — Headquarters, St. 
Paul; Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North 
Dakota, South Dakota. 

Fourteenth Division — Headquarters, Kan- 
sas City; Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyom- 
ing, Colorado. 

Fifteenth Division — Headquarters, San 
Antonio; New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, 
Louisiana, Arizona. 

Sixteenth Division — Headquarters, San 
Francisco; California, Oregon, Washington, 
Idaho, Montana, Utah, Nevada. 

In each one of these divisions, with the pos- 
sible exception of the sixth and fifteenth, there 
is an excess of infantry and a deficiency in the 
arms upon which infantry depends for main- 
tenance and operation in war. Recent figiu-es 
show that the various divisions fall short of 
what efficiency would demand in action ap- 
proximately as follows: — 



99 



ARE WE READY? 





b 














^ 




i 


fi 


II 


a a 
•^8 


1 
11 


1 

'V o 


II 

a 8 


|j 


1 

1 


i 


'£ 


o 


w 


CO 


[i. 


<i 


<1 


CO 


fS 


5 


6 


3 


3 


_ 


1 


2 




K. 




6 


_ 


3 


_ 


_ 


2 


1 








7 


10 


4 


1 


1 


4 


4 








8 


9 


9 


3 


1 


2 


4 








9 


10 


6 


3 


2 


3 


3 








10 


10 


12 


3 


1 


1 


3 


1 






11 


7 


6 


_ 


_ 


1 


_ 








12 


6 


3 


2 


_ 


2 


3 








13 


8 


11 


3 


2 


3 


4 








14 


7 


8 


2 


_ 


2 


3 








15 


7 


5 


2 


1 


3 


4 








16 


7 


7 


3 




2 


2 








Total 


87 


77 


25 


8 


26 


33 


12 


12 


12 



This condition, to some extent, at least, is 
due to misinterpretation by the organized miU- 
tia itseK of the terms of om* mihtia law. Under 
the amended Militia Act, the President has the 
power to fix the minimum strength of enlisted 
men in each company, battery, troop, etc. 
Misunderstanding, or misinterpretation, or 
both, seems to have centered around the mean- 
ing of the term "minimum number." The 
original intention was that the minimum 
strength of any unit should be sufficient to 
provide men in large enough numbers to be 
trained as a unit, and a sufficient number of 

100 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

units to make possible a nucleus so organized 
as to be capable of expansion to adequate war 
strength without losing in efficiency. 

In other words, the intention of the act was 
to supply enough men to make possible the 
application of the general theory of the na- 
tional defense, so far as concerned the militia. 
During the years following the passage of the 
act, however, its terms have been interpreted, 
apparently, to mean that the minimum num- 
ber is the smallest strength that units must 
have in order to be taken into the Federal serv- 
ice. There has come about, therefore, the ex- 
istence of units so absurdly small as to make 
it impossible to carry out what our military 
men had in mind in their efforts to fix a 
standard of minimum strength. The latest 
complete figures available show that out of 
approximately 1600 companies of infantry, 
1030 are below minimum strength. The aver- 
age strength of the field artillery is about two 
thirds of what the law requires. In no other 
arm of the service is the average up to the 
required standard. 

101 



ARE WE READY? 

In recent years, very definite efforts have 
been made to standardize the system of train- 
ing for the organized mihtia, but the shortage 
of officers in the regular army has made it im- 
possible to supply anywhere near the number 
necessary for instructing and training of troops 
outside the regular organization. Lack of facil- 
ities for both indoor and outdoor training has 
also been a serious obstacle. 

As a result, recruits are admitted to militia 
organizations as trained soldiers fit for duty 
in the regular army who have had no actual 
field experience and the most casual indoor 
military training. Among my acquaintances is 
a man who has been admitted in this manner 
into what is known as a crack regiment of mili- 
tia. He has had eight periods of marching in 
an armory, during which time, to use his own 
words, he has learned "which end of the gun 
the bullet comes out of, and what is the differ- 
ence between 'right' and 'left dress.' " 

The militiaman each year receives twenty- 
four hour-and-a-haM drills in the armory and 
a period of training in the field — if the legis- 

102 



/'--^^ I 


j^^ 






L ■ 


. ^, *•*■•'• - "-•' " 



^\ 



^p 



MILITIA OFFICERS IN CONSULTATION DURING FIELD PRACTICE 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

lature of his State does not refuse to appropri- 
ate the necessary money for the field practice. 

Statistics recently collected show that of a 
total of 1971 mihtia organizations reported on, 
480 had drill halls not adequate for indoor 
instruction; 162 had armories used for other 
than mihtary purposes, which interfered with 
miUtary training; 188 which did not afford the 
United States property the proper protection; 
470 which were not equipped with means of 
indoor rifle practice; 182 which had neither 
equipment nor room for indoor gallery prac- 
tice; and 628 whose location, construction, and 
equipment were not such as to encourage en- 
listment or reenhstment. 

It can be shown that one fourth of our or- 
ganized militia cannot be properly instructed 
in drill, and cannot receive the necessary in- 
struction in target practice. 

Not only is the organized militia deficient 
in the necessities for proper training, but it is 
not adequately suppKed with imiforms and 
equipment, either in quantity or in kind, suffi- 
cient for its needs, should all, or a large part 

103 



ARE WE READY? 

of it, be called into the service of the United 
States. A very noticeable tendency is shown 
in many States to provide only the supplies 
needed by the troops for the short period of 
the annual field exercises. Many States equip 
their troops, apparently, for state purposes 
only. Yet the Federal Government spends 
about $4,000,000 a year to help bring the mih- 
tia to reasonable efficiency as a war organi- 
zation. The mihtia's deficiency in the most 
important auxiliary arms of the service, field 
artillery and cavalry, is due to the fact that 
these arms are the most expensive to main- 
tain, and least likely to be found necessary in 
handling local situations. Federal expenditures 
have not yet given States generally a broader 
view of the functions of their militia organiza- 
tions nor secured means of rapid, orderly, and 
effective mobilization. 

The condition that carries with it the great- 
est peril is the total lack of any means of filling 
out the militia organizations, already contain- 
ing many untrained men, with men who have 
had even preliminary military instruction. 

104 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

There is a vast difference between paper 
strength and actual mihtary strength. On 
paper, the strength of our organized miUtia is 
8323 officers, and 119,087 men, or approxi- 
mately 127,300 men and officers. 

The actual strength of the militia, officers 
and men, can be placed at approximately 64,- 
000 men and officers, but it is not conceivable 
that even this number could be assembled in a 
time of urgent need, and it is a fact that almost 
every organization contains a considerable 
number of men who have not received suffi- 
cient or proper training to fit them to be 
capable soldiers. In time of sudden war, what 
is now believed to be the actual strength of 
our militia would undoubtedly be reduced by 
the inability, physical or otherwise, of mem- 
bers of the organizations to serve with the 
colors. 

What is to be done about it? 

The adjutant-generals and other military 
officers of our States, the military men in our 
regular army, and many of our leading states- 
men have given the closest study to the prob- 

105 



ARE WE READY? 

lem, and they are approaching the general 
agreement approximating the following: — 

That in time of peace, each State should be 
considered as a territorial militia department 
with the Governor the commander-in-chief of 
the department; 

That officers on the staflf of the Governor, 
not members of the line or of the staff corps of 
the organized militia, should not be considered 
as part of the organization under the law; 

That there should be sufficient officers and 
administrative corps to carry on proper mili- 
tary administration in time of peace, and to 
provide sufficient officers for the state organ- 
ization both in time of peace and war; 

That the organization of the militia should 
be made to conform with the divisional organ- 
ization of the regular army; 

That if the number of companies in a com- 
plete militia regiment falls, at any time, below 
twelve, exclusive of the machine-gun company, 
the deficiency should be replaced within six 
months, or the regiment considered as perma- 
nently abandoned, its members either being 

106 



OUR CITIZEN FIGHTERS 

assigned to other organizations or mustered 
out. 

We opened this chapter by subscribing to 
the contention that it is worth while to call 
things by their right names. There is no dis- 
puting the fact that, with few exceptions, the 
state organizations of our militia are poorly 
filled, indifferently trained, partially, and in 
some cases wholly, lacking in personnel and 
equipment necessary to a well-balanced fight- 
ing force which can be counted upon to give a 
satisfactory account of itself in battle. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

An army across the Connecticut River, driv- 
ing our handful of defenders northward, was as 
far as the speculation was carried in our imag- 
inary attack on New York. 

Suppose it is carried a bit further. 

Suppose the following as fragmentary press 
accounts of a struggle at the Connecticut to 
check a hostile advance on New York: — 

With the Army, March 28 — Although the. 
presence of small advance detachments of the 
enemy was reported by our scouts toward 
evening, apparently the main body of the en- 
emy's forces had not yet come up, and, owing 
to our lack of aeroplanes for scouting, it was 
decided to throw a squadron of cavalry across 
the river. 

It was only when the troops were pouring 
across in fancied security that two batteries of 
the enemy's guns, cleverly posted and screened, 

108 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

opened their concentrated fire on the crowded 
bridge. 

Before the blast of shrapnel and machine- 
gun projectiles, scores of our men were swept 
into the river. The challenge of the enemy's 
guns was taken up by our artillery, and a 
spirited duel continued for an hour, under 
cover of which our cavalry retreated and re- 
formed. The enemy's batteries finally became 
silent, but on account of our lack of aeroplanes 
it was impossible to determine whether the 
hostile guns had been put out of action by our 
fire or had changed their position. Because of 
an appalhng shortage, orders have been issued 
to save every possible round of ammunition. 

In the trenches, March 29 — Before dawn it 
became apparent that the enemy was to at- 
tempt the crossing. Several night advances by 
small detachments were made. But our scouts 
were alert and our guns had the range. During 
the night, apparently, the enemy brought up 
additional and heavier artillery. 

These guns were set to work at an early hour 
this morning, when the prospect began to 

109 



ARE WE READY? 

change. Several of our batteries were soon 
moved backward. Though suffering heavy 
loss, at last the enemy managed to get a bri- 
gade of infantry and a battery of artillery 
across the river and into position. Under the 
protection of a heavy bombardment of our posi- 
tion, two more batteries were got over and were 
planted at the bridge-head. With three hos- 
tile batteries and a brigade of infantry over 
the water, a retirement to our secondary en- 
trenched position was ordered. 

Hardly had the movement been completed 
when the overwhelming superiority of the 
enemy's field artillery became apparent. A 
terrific fire was poured into our lines from a 
distance fully four miles away. Our Ughter 
artillery was powerless against the heavy guns. 

The enemy is now centering his rain of steel 
upon our entrenchments. For three hours our 
brave young fellows have stood the terrific 
ordeal, unable to fire a shot in return. Any 
man raising his head above the fire-swept earth 
ramparts is certain of death. Lying flat on 
their bellies, all our men can do is to pray for a 

110 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

respite and a chance to charge the ever-increas- 
ing forces on our side of the river and to silence 
their guns. The enemy for the most part is 
using shrapnel. Hastily entrenched as we are, 
our forces are suffering terribly. 

Hostile aeroplanes, like great hawks, are 
soaring continually over our lines. It is impos- 
sible to conceal our batteries, no matter how 
frequently they are moved. Our inferiority in 
aircraft and the impossibility of locating hostile 
batteries is maddening. While the hostile gun- 
ners find the range quickly and exactly, we 
waste round after round of precious ammuni- 
tion in attempting to search out the enemy's 
positions. 

Ignoring our guns, the hostile artillerymen, 
relying on concealment for immunity, are con- 
centrating all their efforts to enfilade our 
trenches. With an apparent prodigality of 
ammunition they continue to pour bouquet 
after bouquet of high explosives or combined 
shrapnel and high explosive shells into our 
works. 

With the Army, March 29 — Toward mid- 
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ARE WE READY? 

afternoon our artillery fire noticeably slack- 
ened. The enemy continued to pour a wither- 
ing fire of ever-increasing volume and intensity 
over our trenches. The enemy's plan was to 
keep our artillery busy and to hold our forces 
in the trenches while the crossing of the river 
was accomplished. On our side of the river, the 
artillery was thrown well forward in screened 
positions. Only once during the soul-racking 
day was there a charge. It came during a lull 
in the artillery duel when a regiment of militia, 
lying in advanced trenches, cut to pieces under 
the merciless hail from a battery of quick-firers, 
cracked under the strain and sprang into the 
open. Careless of the quick-firers masked be- 
hind the enemy's advance posts, they charged 
with the bayonet. A stream of lead was poured 
into them before they had covered half the dis- 
tance to the river. Only a handful regained the 
trenches. It was here that the enemy showed 
immense superiority in mitrailleuses, which 
gave them marvelous mobility and a very 
deadly advantage. These quick-firers were 
masked with great skill, and were worked with 

m 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

the very apparent object of drawing an infan- 
try attack. It was with the greatest difficulty 
that our officers were able to prevent impetu- 
ous and disastrous advances from our trenches. 

Your correspondent has talked to a wounded 
lieutenant brought to the rear at the beginning 
of the engagement. 

"We are helpless against those guns across 
the river," he said. "It was heartbreaking to 
see the boys dropping from the shrapnel, with- 
out a chance to get back at the beggars. It 
made me sick, even in the excitement of it all. 
The enemy's quick-firers were marvelous. I 
am bound to say they had it pretty much their 
own way. If we only had aeroplanes to match 
theirs! They are constantly sailing over our 
positions. Then it always happens the same 
way. Those aeroplanes are really wonderful in 
the way they search out the positions of our 
guns. We always know that within half an 
hour of observation by aeroplane, shells will 
begin to fall above gunners, unless they have 
altered their position. 

"The shell fire is terrifying. I confess to you 
113 



ARE WE READY? 

that there were times when my nerves were 
absolutely gone. One hears the zip-zip of bul- 
lets, the hoom of the large guns, the ste-tang of 
the lighter artillery; and in all this infernal 
experience of noise and stench, the screams, at 
times, of dying horses and men joined with the 
fury of gun-fire and rising shrill above it, no 
man may boast of his courage. There were 
moments when I was a coward with all of them. 
It cannot last much longer. We must either 
attack or fall back." 

The first day of fighting proves conclusively 
that the enemy intends making it a battle of 
guns against men. If our lines are forced to 
retire, it is clearly the enemy's intention to 
advance to our position with as little loss of 
men as possible. It is evident that the hostile 
forces are supplied with abundant ammunition 
for an extended campaign. Our men have not 
enough at hand for another day's action. 

With the Army, March 29 (midnight) — Our 
forces are retreating toward the North, fighting 
a stubborn rear-guard action. They have failed 
to hold the invaders at the Connecticut. 

114 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

Washington, March 30 — A War Depart- 
ment statement, admitting defeat at the Con- 
necticut River and the hopelessness of further 
attempting to defend New York, contains the 
following report concerning yesterday's fight- 
ing: — 

"By nightfall it became apparent that if 
complete annihilation was to be avoided, a 
retirement must be attempted, and an order 
was given to commence it at 8.30 o'clock. The 
movement was covered with the most devoted 
intrepidity and determination by the artillery, 
which has suffered heavily, and the fine work 
of the cavalry assisted materially in a most 
difiicult and dangerous operation. 

"Our initial force has been cut off from re- 
treat toward New York, and its only avenue is 
north. It must join with the New England 
militia before there will be hope of successfully 
making another stand." 

Now the only speculation in all of the fore- 
going is in its application. The description of 
the fighting is taken, almost word for word, 

115 



ARE WE READY? 

from official and well-authenticated news ac- 
counts of the struggle in Europe in the battle 
of the Marne, practically the only alteration 
being the substitution of the words "Ameri- 
can," "our," or "enemy," for "German," 
"English," "French," or "Allies." 

It is admitted, of course, that portions of 
actual narration, which particularly dealt with 
incidents where there was a marked superiority 
of artillery strength on one side or the other, 
have been selected. 

Is such a selection and such an application 
warranted in a discussion of our military 
strength, — a discussion based on a premise 
that a first-class nation would consider it possi- 
ble and profitable to attack us by land ? 

A part of the answer is in history; a part of 
it is in what is going on in Europe every day; a 
part of it is in the facts of our own power of 
defense. 

"Battles are won by superiority of fiire." 

When a military expert takes a long breath, 
pauses for complete silence and for concen- 
trated attention, and divulges this one great 

116 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

secret of success in armed strife on sea or land, 
there is not one of us in ten thousand, prob- 
ably, who is inclined to rear up and dispute 
him. 

Even the man who has never laid finger to 
trigger has a sneaking notion that since battles 
hang on the ability to kill or maim, and since 
killing in war, for the most part, is done by the 
burning of powder in various quantities and 
various ways, the side who can set oflP its pow- 
der to the greatest advantage is the side that is 
going to win. 

Eye, reach, and hitting power may be set 
down as a fairly accurate dynamic analysis of 
this matter of superiority of fire. '' Volume, 
accuracy, and range of fire" is another and 
more technical way of putting it. 

Strategy, bayonet action, cavalry charges, 
all the tricks, deceptions, and heroic incidents 
of a campaign, go into this matter of burning 
powder. For it is true, of course, that all battles 
are not won by actual superiority of fire. Many 
of them are won by the "power of one side or 
another to exert, instantly, at some point in 

117 



ARE WE READY? 

the struggle, an overwhelming superiority of 
fire. 

Something Hke forty-five years ago, a Ger- 
man fighting force captured the French Em- 
peror, Napoleon III, Marshal MacMahon, and 
all of the French regular army except what had 
been bottled up at Metz, and other forts on 
the frontier. 

All this happened by reason of the fact that 
the Germans had worked themselves into a 
position where they could, if they wanted to, 
pour a, fire into the French ranks that would 
mean slaughter and practical annihilation. In 
securing this advantage, the artillery had been 
the most powerful factor. The German artil- 
lery had been rushed to the front, supported 
by a very small escort of cavalry and infantry, 
and by being at the right place at the right 
time had been able to exert a fire which drove 
the French back in their efforts to escape 
to the East. Rapidly other German forces 
pressed in. German batteries secured hills bor- 
dering the valley of the Meuse in sufficient 
strength to repulse every attempt of the French 

118 




^ •,•••■ :^i#M*>^^ 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

army to break through. The long-range shell- 
ing of the forces massed in Sedan was so mur- 
derous in its effect that to escape the slaughter 
the French were forced to an unconditional 
surrender. 

It was in 1870 that the tremendous impor- 
tance of the field gun in modern warfare began 
to be demonstrated. Up to that time artillery 
had been looked upon as an awkward and cum- 
bersome weapon. It had been the custom to 
place the artillery well in the rear of marching 
columns and to protect it with large bodies of 
infantry and cavalry. This whole theory was 
upset by the Germans in the Franco-Prussian 
War. They risked surprise and capture of 
artillery for the advantage of exerting a power- 
ful artillery fire before the enemy could bring 
his field guns from the rear to the front. 

In the present struggle in Europe, in every 
individual battle, the artillery is in action from 
the very start, and the advantage to one side 
or the other is almost always determined by 
the outcome of preliminary artillery duels. 

The musket has not gone out. The rifle is 
119 



ARE WE READY? 

simply a refined musket. It has its part; but in 
modern warfare the man with the rifle comes 
in only after the field gun has done its work, or 
when the field gun is doing its work effectively 
— at least, as well as the field gun of the other 
fellow. 

The rifle and the bayonet are the deciding 
factors in many a sharp struggle in Europe, 
but, in the official accounts, before the infan- 
try attack, we almost invariably read of the 
artillery duel. 

The charge may come at a period when the 
duel is a draw, when a change of position is in 
progress, or when the batteries of one side have 
established a superiority. 

At other times the man with the gun lies in 
the shelter of the trench facing death with 
every shrapnel shell that screeches its way 
from the enemy's lines, waiting, day by day, 
sometimes praying, for action that will break 
the terrific monotony. 

One of the most interesting, illuminating, 
and pathetic documents touching this phase 
of modern warfare is contained in the letters of 

120 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

Norman Leslie, a captain of the British Rifle 
Brigade, who was killed in action near Lille, on 
October 18, 1914. Only a few days before the 
action in which he lost his life. Captain Leslie 
wrote this to a member of his family: — 

September 23 — I write this in the midst of a 
furious battle, but as our part is to sit still in our 
trenches for the time, I am enabled to do so. Our 
artillery are about seven or eight thousand yards 
from German main position. Night before last we 
marched, crossed a certain river and climbed up to 
the heights on the other side, where we relieved a 
certain regt. They had been in these trenches for 
seven days and had lost Heaven knows what; the 
2 co'ys whose lines I relieved having alone 120 
casualties, i.e., 25 per cent! Well, we got the busi- 
ness of relieving them done by about 2 a.m., and 
the minute dawn broke their snipers (German) 
started at us. It was light about 5 a.m., and we had 
a little time to look around and examine our posi- 
tion. The trenches are at the top of a line of hills 
with the valley and river in rear of us; they are 
most irregular, and just consist of little zig-zag lines 
on the highest part of the sky line. The German 
main position is only 1200 yards off, and very 
powerful; they have got earth trenches and infan- 
try about 300 yards from us. 

I've now got to 7 a.m. yesterday, the 22nd. About 
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ARE WE READY? 

7.30 hell broke loose above us and shrapnel fairly 
tore around us; we lay low in our trenches with 
only one sentry looking out for their infantry. I Ve 
got about 120 men under me in a series of hollow 
ventrants, so I can only see the 50 men in my par- 
ticular hollow, but I walk round on a path just 
below these little hillocks which connects them all. 
About 8.30 a man ran from A round to me and 
said he'd got about 7 men badly hit in their 
trenches, so I dashed round with him and found a 
proper charnel house — all shrapnel wounds, one 
arm hanging by a shred, another pierced through 
the lungs, another neck, back and thigh, 2 broken 
legs. ... I got a corporal and we pulled them out 
and down to the path where we had got another 

little pit dug. It was d- d ticklish work. I was 

trying to tie up one fellow's leg when crash came 
another shrapnel and wiped out another man 20 
yards off. At the end of the job I was drenched 
with their blood, the unpleasant part being that 
we have no water to drink at present, far less to 
wash with. I returned to my little pit and, working 
hard, made it moderately bomb-proof by about 
1.00. About 2.00 the German artillery died down 
and we were n't worried again till the evening — 
their snipers don't worry us at all. The cruel thing 
for the wounded was that they had to lie there all 
yesterday; we had not doctor or stretcher bearers, 
and even if they had been there they could n't have 

122 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

gone down, as it's fair death moving from the 
trenches to the river by day. About 7 p.m. it got 
dark and we sent them off, but one was dead, and 
the lung fellow died on the way down. 

Well, I've got to about 9 p.m. yesterday, and I 
retired after my bully dinner to my crevice in the 
ground and was instantly woke by star shell, 2 of 
which pitched 10 and 15 yards away; and they 
were of course followed by a roar of rifle fire and 
artillery as well. You know what they do: they 
look like a rocket, and bursting diffuse a pale light 
around them — quite harmless in themselves, but 
excellent in lighting up our position to the German 
fire. 

They started up again with their old shrapnel 
about 9 A.M. — it's pretty to watch. First comes a 
Taube aeroplane miles high above us, circles round 
and drops out sort of smoky balls just over us to 
give his gunner friends the range — then about five 
minutes afterwards, bang come the shells. How- 
ever, we suffered but little this morning, as our gun- 
ners came up about a mile behind us and helped 
by one of our aeroplanes fairly bombarded the 
German batteries. We've sat here quite comfort- 
ably all day between the rival batteries watching 
the shells burst on both sides. The aeroplanes cross 
continually, but don't molest each other, and, of 
course, fire clean out of range of our infantry fire. 
They certainly are the masters of the situation, 

123 



ARE WE READY? 

these fliers — • though they do no damsLge them- 
selves, yet they give all information and are ap- 
parently quite immune themselves. It is a curious 
position being between the rival batteries. We 
hear them sizzling straight over us all the time. 

The shrapnel bursting emit white smoke, and the 
high explosives a black smoke. The Germans have 
got two of their big batteries working over us. 
They don't cause nearly as much loss of life as 
shrapnel, unless they hit a column of men or house. 
But anything hit is blown to bits. Very little re- 
mains of a house, far less of a man. Well, I must 
stop now and try and sleep a little before the night 
bombardment. The coming of day is a real joy 
to us. Night is bloody and we fear an attack the 
whole time. The general plan — which I 'm allowed 
to state by the Censor as it's already in your 
papers, and this letter won't reach you for ages — 
is that we sit tight till the French outflank them, 
then a general advance till we bump up into an- 
other of these positions. 

October 6 — Herewith a typical night. 5 :45 p.m. 
All stand to arms during the dusk till night has 
fallen, the Germans being rather fond of attacking 
at that hour. (Attack on the guards, etc.) 

The men sleep in the trenches with double sentry 
posts every 15 yards or so. I lie in the open just 
behind them ready to go to any part of my line 
that gets engaged. About 8.00 I rise with a start. 



THE BATTLE OF THE CONNECTICUT 

and see a star rocket coming from the German 
trench, and pitching right beside me — during its 
flight it illumines everything round it with a pale 
yellow light — every one instinctively holds their 
breath, and those standing up lie down, for that 
which follows comes quickly ! A rattle of musketry 
and machine guns! I get up and walk round the 
sentries, then lie down again — suddenly crash 
comes the German shrapnel and for about 5 min- 
utes the peaceful night resounds with shell fire. 
Silence again, and I try and sleep for a few minutes 
— then a watery gurgling sound over my head, for 
all the world like the lap of water against a boat, 
and it's our own shells passing over our heads to 
burst on the German trenches or artillery. This 
continues on and off throughout the night, relieved 
occasionally by the swish of a sentry's bullet either 
from our or their trench. 

How far does all this touch America and our 
chance of successfully resisting a land attack? 



CHAPTER VII 
HELL ON WHEELS 

Two great elements go into the matter of 
"superiority of fire," or, if you like, of "eye, 
reach, and hitting power." 

One is the element that goes off. The other 
is the element that sets it off. Guns in war are 
of no use without men. The obverse is no less a 
fact. It must be remembered that the rifle is a 
gun just as much, though not just as big, as the 
heavy howitzer. 

We speak of our "war" strength and our 
"peace" strength. Our peace strength is made 
up of the men we maintain under arms. Our 
war strength includes these, and, in addition, 
the men who would be under arms if war should 
come our way. While on paper the peace 
strength of our regular army is about 90,000 
men and officers of all arms, and of our organ- 
ized militia 127,000 men and officers of varie- 
gated arms, — mostly infantry, — the strength 

126 



HELL ON WHEELS 

of both organizations combined, the force 
which we could instantly throw into battle line 
on the Atlantic Coast is about 50,000 men, 
while the mobile force we could assemble 
within our borders within thirty days is about 
90,000 men. That is about our peace strength, 
and it may be said that it is our actual immedi- 
ate war strength. 

Within six weeks, of course, we might pos- 
sibly increase our force with men who have 
had some military training, to something near 
150,000 men. That may be considered as our 
semi-war strength. 

Experts, including the chief men of our 
General Staff and several of our Secretaries of 
War, have estimated that for a successful de- 
fense of our continental territory against hos- 
tile aggression by any first-class nation of the 
world, we should have ready at the outbreak 
of the war a well-balanced force of not less than 
500,000 men, with at least 300,000 more to be 
raised at once. We should without the shadow 
of a doubt get them — ultimately — even if war 
should come to-night. Yet if history teaches 

m 



ARE WE READY? 

anything, we should get most of them by con- 
scription. They would be poorly trained, if 
trained at all. The greater the time required 
to collect them, the more we should have to 
collect. Untrained men desert faster, are cap- 
tured of tener, and are killed off more rapidly 
than trained men. But we should get them. 
Sooner or later we should have the men. 

Men, millions of them, are already manufac- 
tured. Iron and copper, millions of tons of it, 
are in the ground. In war, the men, ultimately, 
would be trained to shoot; minerals, ultimately, 
would be converted into things to shoot with. 
But the cost in life, money, and time, during 
the process of converting military resources 
into military strength during actual warfare, 
has always been, and must always be, fright- 
ful. Our actual immediate strength in the one 
great element, men, is shown elsewhere in these 
pages. 

If we should find it necessary to put half a 
million men in the field, and if, through ne- 
cessity, we should find the way to do it, how 
should we arm them.^ 

128 



HELL ON WHEELS 

Rifles? Probably. We have finished, or 
nearly finished, about 700,000 rifles, with some- 
thing over 200,000,000 rounds of ammunition. 
Counting out coast artillery, an army of 500,- 
000 men would have about 420,000 infantry 
and cavalry. Our field service regulations, 
based on the experience of all nations in war, 
call for 1340 rounds of ammunition behind each 
rifle and 1080 rounds behind each saber. If 
1200 rounds be taken as a safe average, we 
should need a small-arms ammunition supply 
of about 504,000,000 rounds; and if we were to 
have an adequate supply for the rifles we have 
finished or nearly finished, as against the 200,- 
000,000 rounds we now have, we should have 
about 840,000,000 rounds. It is to be remem- 
bered, however, that small-arms ammunition 
can be manufactured quickly and in large 
quantities. It is not in this shortage that the 
greatest danger lies. 

Should we be forced into a war prepared as 
we are to-day, after we should have herded 
our men, put rifles in their hands, buckled car- 
tridge belts around them, and sent them into 

129 



ARE WE READY? 

battle, thousands of them, without question, 
would be slaughtered before they could dis- 
charge an effective bullet from their rifles. 

The reason for this would be our weakness 
in the matter of the field gun. 

There are two weapons which modern war- 
fare has developed for use in fire action. These 
are the magazine rifle and the field gun. The 
rifle is considered to be most effective at 800 
yards, although the modern weapon can be 
used effectively at a range of 1200 yards, and 
even beyond that. For rifle fire to become 
a factor, and an important factor, in mod- 
ern warfare, therefore, the infantry must be 
thrown very close to the enemy's line. Now, 
the range of the modern field gun is measured 
in miles, and in every battle of recent times 
the infantry has gone into the zone of artillery 
fire long before reaching the range where any 
purpose would be served through the use of the 
rifle. The field artillery is designed not only to 
cover an infantry advance, but to support an 
infantry attack throughout an action. The 
artillery may be directed toward an enemy's 

130 



HELL ON WHEELS 

own field batteries in order to create confusion, 
to suppress or neutralize opposing artillery 
fire, to force frequent changes in the location 
of hostile batteries, or it may be used directly 
on the infantry of the opposing force. No 
matter where it is turned, its purpose is to 
shatter an attack or to support one. When 
under cover of supporting field guns, infantry 
forces gain ground, that ground can only be held 
by the maintained activity of the field guns. 

Through the variety of the work which it 
has been called upon to do, field artillery has 
practically classified itself. Common to mod- 
ern warfare, there are now batteries used for 
supporting infantry advances; batteries used 
to neutralize an enemy's field artillery fire; 
batteries whose function is to break down 
obstacles, earth-works or men, which may be 
in the way of advancing infantry. The ac- 
counts of engagements in all our modern wars 
show with steadily increasing clearness how 
absolutely indispensable in successful military 
operations is the field gun and back of it the 
trained artilleryman. 

131 



ARE WE READY? 

Only as this is being written, a copy of a 
New York evening paper has been laid on my 
desk. The following are the headlines and the 
first few paragraphs of its daily story of the 
War in Europe: — 

KAISER BEATEN IN BATTLES TO EXTEND 
HOLD NORTH OF AISNE 



FRENCH TWICE DEFEAT ATTACKS 



German Charges near Vic, Twelve Miles west of Soissons 
broken up by Fire of Field Batteries 



Hill in Argonne valiantly defended against Invaders 



Teuton Artillery outmatched in Long-Range Engagement 
at Perthes — Le Pretre Forest cleared of Enemy 



Paris, Monday — Germany's aggressive maneu- 
vers in the Soissons-Aisne district appear to have 
been completely halted by the splendidly con- 
ducted defense of the French, not only on the south 
bank of the Aisne, but westward of Soissons, where 
the French maintain a strong hold on the north 
side of the stream. 

Deterred from attacking east of Soissons by the 
fire of French field batteries, the Germans have 
attempted twice to break down the defensive of 
the French at a point northeast of Vic-sur-Aisne 

132 



HELL ON WHEELS 

and about twelve miles north of Soissons. Both 
these attacks were defeated by the French, who 
maintained their positions intact. 

Near Perthes-les-Hurlus, between Rheims and 
the Argonne, the French artillery has overcome 
that of the Germans in a violent duel. 

French artillery forces defending " Hill 263," near 
Bourseuilles, in the Argonne district, have repulsed 
a determined attack by the Germans and have held 
all their trenches. 

The Kaiser's troops have been driven from sev- 
eral field forts in the foothills of the Vosges Moun- 
tains, notably in the Forest of Le Pretre. 

From the sea to the Oise there was yesterday a 
violent storm, particularly in Belgium. The day 
saw artillery fighting at certain points. 

In the region of Perthes there was very eflScient 
marksmanship on the part of our artillery on the 
positions of the enemy. 

The Chief of our Ordnance Department re- 
cently estimated that to build enough field 
guns for an army of 70,000 would require at 
least a year. 

Are we ready .^ How would we match up 
with any possible foe in this single matter of 
*'hell on wheels," — the modern field gun? 

Suppose it should transpire that we were 
133 



ARE WE READY? 

confronted suddenly with just such a problem 
as the situation we have imagined to exist at 
the Connecticut River. Suppose that instead 
of this handful of 50,000 men, we should be 
able to throw forward as a battle line a force 
of 500,000 men; and suppose that the enemy, 
instead of outnumbering us, should be only 
equal to our own force numerically, but should 
be equipped with field guns and ammunition in 
accordance with the most advanced theories 
and practice of modern warfare, — what then 
would be our chance of immediate success? 

Our General Staff has set the proportion of 
field guns which we should have at 3.16 guns 
for every thousand infantry and cavalry. That 
is a lower proportion than exists in actual op- 
eration in the army of any other first-class na- 
tion in the world. There are instances where 
European armies average five guns for every 
thousand infantry and cavalry. The present 
war in Europe indicates that the percentage 
in the future will be much higher. 

Our General Staff has classified field artil- 
lery as follows: — 

134. 



HELL ON WHEELS 

"Horse," "light," "mountain," and 
"heavy." 

Horse batteries are armed with the 3-ineh 
gun. 

Light batteries are armed with the 3-ineh 
gun or the 3.8-inch howitzer. 

Heavy batteries are armed with the 4.7- 
inch howitzer, the 4.7-inch gun, or the 6-inch 
howitzer. 

The 4.7-inch howitzer, drawn by eight 
horses, has very considerable mobility, and is 
really intermediate between the light and 
heavy calibers. 

Horse batteries are assigned for service with 
the cavalry. 

Light or mountain batteries and 4.7-inch 
howitzer batteries are assigned for service with 
infantry divisions. 

Heavy batteries (4.7-inch gun and 6-inch 
howitzer) are assigned as army artillery. 

On the basis of 3.16 guns for every thousand 
of infantry and cavalry, the General Staff and 
the War College have made the very modest 
recommendation that provision be immedi- 

135 



ARE WE READY? 

ately made for the manufacture of 1300 field 
guns. What we have built or approaching 
completion is not over 800 guns. What we 
have actually built is about 650 guns. 

In his report for the year 1911, Henry L. 
Stimson, then Secretary of W^ar, said this: 

Attention has been repeatedly called to the very 
unprepared condition of the army with respect to 
reserve supplies of field artillery guns, carriages, 
and ammunition. We are less adequately supplied 
with field artillery material than with any other 
class of fighting equipment. There is not enough 
field artillery ammunition for the guns we now 
have for a single engagement such as were frequent 
in the Manchurian War. The manufacture of this 
class of material involves processes requiring much 
time and which there is no possible way to hasten. It 
follows, of course, that provision must be made for 
such material long in advance of its probable use. 
At the present rate of appropriations it is estimated 
that it would take more than fifty years to secure 
a reasonable supply of the field artillery guns, car- 
riages, and ammunition that would be necessary in 
the event of a war. I invite particular attention to 
the following views of the Chief of Staff upon this 
subject : " The existing want of field artillery guns, 
carriages, and ammunition constitutes a grave 

136 




ENGLAND 



U.S, 



COMPARATIVE STRENGTH IN FIELD ARTILLERY 



ARE WE READY? 

menace to the public safety in case of war. Ordin- 
ary prudence would seem to dictate that the appro- 
priations, especially for those field artillery guns, 
carriages, and ammunition, should be very greatly 
increased. Once a state of war exists with a first- 
class power there will be no opportunity to buy the 
material abroad or time to manufacture it at home, 
even if all available plants in this country were run- 
ning at the maximum capacity, without such delay 
as would be fatal to our hopes of success. This 
shortage of field artillery material is the most seri- 
ous feature of the present military situation, and 
one which should be immediately corrected. It 
constitutes a source of grave danger." 

The Chief of Staff to whom Mr. Stimson 
referred was Major-General Leonard Wood. 
Although Wood, Stimson, and other of our 
military men and statesmen have continued to 
lay stress on the peril that lies in our lack of 
field guns and equipment, and although some 
progress has been made toward securing the 
most modern weapons of this character, the 
greatest shortage in the auxiliary arms of our 
defensive force is still in the field artillery. 

Mr. Stimson's statement regarding our am- 
munition supply is approximately as accurate 

138 



HELL ON WHEELS 

to-day as it was at the time that it was printed. 
It is abundantly substantiated by figures 
which have been secured in connection with 
recent wars. A statistician in the French 
Army recently estimated that, during an en- 
gagement in France, a battery of the famous 
75-millimeter (3-inch) guns averaged 600 rounds 
of ammunition per day for each gun. This 
figure is very high for a daily average. Some 
experts fix 350 rounds as a minimum which 
should be with the gun. It is conservative to 
say that there should be 1850 rounds with the 
gun, in the train and at the base. 

We have ready in this country not much 
more than 300,000 rounds of field-gun am- 
munition. If all the field guns which our esti- 
mates call for were built and put into action 
at once, which is conceivable, and if all were 
of the same type, so that the ammunition could 
be interchanged and concentrated at the points 
where it might be most necessary, we should have 
in the whole country not more than sufficient 
ammunition for a single day's engagement. 

If, in a desperate situation, such as we have 
139 



ARE WE READY? 

imagined, our enemy should be equipped ac- 
cording to the most advanced theories of field- 
gun artillery fire, he would have probably five 
field guns for every thousand of his infantry 
and cavalry. If we should have in the field the 
smallest force (420,000 rifles and sabers) with 
which, in the opinion of our General Staflf, we 
could successfully engage in a defensive war, we 
should have about 1.6 guns for every thousand 
of our infantry and cavalry. An enemy would 
not venture to attack us without a fully ade- 
quate supply of ammunition and equipment, 
while we should have about 450 rounds for 
each gun as our total ammunition supply — 
about one fourth of the amount considered 
necessary. The volume of fire which an en- 
emy could exert, both by reason of the greater 
number of his guns and the fact that he could 
afford to waste ammunition in searching out 
our positions, would be overwhelming. It is 
the opinion of military experts that our in- 
fantry would be wholly unable to advance in 
the face of a fire so much more deadly than 
anything we could exert. 

140 



HELL ON WHEELS 

Although there is a shortage of field guns 
even in our regular army, the greatest and 
most alarming shortage is in the militia. For 
years it has been intended that the militia 
should be equipped ultimately on the same 
basis as the regular army; yet our citizen force 
has only the 3-inch light gun, and this in num- 
bers wholly out of proportion to the infantry. 
The total shortage in the militia is about 80 
batteries, or 320 guns. Only one division of the 
organized militia, the Sixth of New York, has 
its full quota of field guns. The latest complete 
figures available show the shortage in other 
divisions to be as follows: — 

The Fifth has one half its quota; the Seventh, 
one sixth; the Eighth, one half; the Ninth, one 
fourth; the Tenth, one sixth; the Eleventh, five 
twelfths ; the Twelfth, one half; the Thirteenth, 
one third; the Fourteenth, five twelfths; the 
Fifteenth, five tweKths; and the Sixteenth, 
one third. 

The cause for such a condition is easily 
found, and it will not be removed untilsome 
means can be devised for securing a greater 

141 



ARE WE READY? 

degree of cooperation in military matters be- 
tween the individual States and the Federal 
Government. Field artillery is a very expen- 
sive arm of the service both to establish and to 
maintain, and it is an arm which would rarely 
be called upon to take part in solving any prob- 
lem which might arise within the borders of 
an individual State. The obhgation of a 
State to maintain its field artillery at top effi- 
ciency is purely a moral one, and since the 
Federal Government would be outside its 
rights in insisting that the necessary propor- 
tion of federal funds, supphed for miUtia pur- 
poses, be devoted to field artillery, it must be 
left to the States to decide whether or not their 
individual militia organizations are to be re- 
garded as purely local military forces, or as 
parts, also, of the Army of the United States. 
Brigadier-General A. L. Mills, as Chief of the 
Division of Militia Affairs, in pointing out the 
dangers of this shortage of field guns in the mili- 
tia in his annual report for 1913, said this: — 

It is sufficient to state here that if the present 
so-called divisions are ever pitted against equal 

142 



HELL ON WHEELS 

forces, adequately provided with field artillery (and 
all foreign nations are so provided), we are fore- 
doomed to defeat. Other factors being equal, to 
place the so-called divisions of the Organized Mili- 
tia in such an action will cause such a disaster in 
morale, time, and actual loss of life as will draw on 
the heads of the responsible authorities maledic- 
tions from one end of the land to the other. The 
preventive is to now, in time of peace, either create 
the necessary field artillery units, or convert the 
relative excess of infantry into this arm. 

The cause for the shortage of field guns in 
the organized militia is also back of the militia's 
inadequate cavalry equipment. At the last 
inspection, the militia was short 64 troops of 
cavalry. The cavalry, like the artillery, is an 
expensive arm to maintain. The militiaman is 
paid only during the time that he serves, but 
horses must be maintained constantly. In re- 
cent years there has grown up the erroneous 
impression that the days of cavalry are passing. 
Nothing is further from the truth. Cavalry 
is still indispensable. It is frequently used in 
both attack and defense, as well as in certain 
forms of scout duty. 

143 



ARE WE READY? 

In a description of an angle of the fighting 
in the now famous battle of the Marne, for 
example, a well-authenticated press dispatch 
from Paris contained this : — ■ 

A terrific cannonade at once opened upon the 
wood, which took fire, and, as a brisk wind was 
blowing, the flames soon turned the forest into an 
inferno. The Germans rushed out in great disorder, 
and the British, who were waiting, fell upon them 
hip and thigh. The men fought with terrible fury. 
The German commander concentrated all his ener- 
gies upon saving the guns, but the British cavalry 
swept down upon the German horsemen that were 
trying to escort the guns to a place of safety. They 
went through them like an avalanche. 

Once again it was clearly demonstrated that the 
cavalry arm is still one of the most effective that an 
army can possess when used at the proper moment 
and in the right way. Cavalry may be useless 
against men intrenched in kopjes, but in the open 
field it is as effective as in the days of the first 
Napoleon. 

Not only did the cavalry prevent the German 
guns from escaping, but, by lightning-like delivery 
of charges, it prevented the gunners from taking 
up positions from which to work havoc on the Brit- 
ish infantry. 

The British guns were busy all the time, and the 

144 



HELL ON WHEELS 

accuracy of their firing soon made every fresh posi- 
tion taken up by the Germans untenable. 

The British infantry went into the fray with ter- 
rible relish and zest. The men got over the ground 
at a great, swinging pace, and when they closed up 
for bayonets they were literally on the run and 
nothing could stop them. They went through the 
Germans like fire through flax. All the French 
gallopers are loud in their praises of the British in 
this battle. 

Stand after stand was made by the Germans in 
the hope of stemming the tide of disaster until sup- 
port should arrive, but the British knew the value 
of time as well as the Germans, and pushed the 
attack home so hotly that, according to the latest 
verbal reports, the Germans lost heavily in dead 
and wounded, while a large amount of artillery, 
great and small, big guns and rapid-firers, fell 
into British hands. 

In time of war, we could count on not more 
than 9000 regular cavalry, and 6000 cavalry of 
the Organized Militia, poorly instructed and 
poorly mounted. We should be short at least 
30,000 of what we should need for a well-bal- 
anced army of 500,000 men of all arms (in- 
cluding 40,000 coast artillery), and should have 
no reserve whatever. 

145 



ARE WE READY? 

The aeroplane is the eye of the artillery. The 
war in Europe, the first great struggle in which 
it has been applied, has demonstrated every 
day the tremendous aid rendered by an aero- 
plane in matters of strategy, in securing infor- 
mation regarding an enemy's movements and 
in assisting gunners in finding the range. 

The United States ranks fourteenth in the 
nations of the world in what it pays for miU- 
tary aviation. Germany leads, with France, 
Russia, Italy, Austria, England, Belgium, and 
Japan, following in order. Greece, Bulgaria, 
Chili, Spain, and Brazil have all spent more 
than the United States for this most important 
arm of the service. 

"Superiority of fire" does not mean alone a 
greater number of guns and a greater number 
of projectiles sent in the general direction of 
an enemy. Accuracy is as important as vol- 
ume. The side which first finds the range 
has the initial advantage in modern battles. 
Rapidity in range-finding has depended almost 
wholly on the successful activity of aerial 
scouts. 

146 



HELL ON WHEELS 

We need not only the material and personnel 
and reserve for adequate field artillery. We 
must have, also, if we are to make sure that 
artillery fire is to be most effective, auxiliary 
arms in adequate proportion. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

"Militarism" is the scare-word thrown into 
almost every serious discussion of our ability 
to defend ourselves. Whether or not it is some- 
thing really to be afraid of, so far as Amer- 
icans and American institutions and traditions 
are concerned, it is a most interesting thing 
when hauled out into the light and examined. 

The problem of home defense has been 
faced since the primitive family squatted 
around in a circle and figured ways and means 
to thwart the hostile intentions of old Stone 
Hatchet and his gang, over across the river, 
and spent spare moments in fashioning newer 
and deadlier skull-crushing implements. 

In some ways, especially in the science of 
killing, we have gone a long road since then; 
but we have not got away from the family 
idea, and we have only elaborated on the fam- 
ily council. We have learned to deal with each 

148 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

other by means of words and scraps of paper. 
We have fought and loved, made peace and 
broken it, made promises and deJBled them, 
gone cahoots, for a spell, with this family or 
that — all to protect or to enlarge the power 
of our own particular family, and with never a 
serious attempt to work out a scheme for one 
big, world-wide family. 

Some families have said that the head of the 
house is boss; others have said the family is 
boss. So we have Prussia ; so we have the United 
States of America — each sure that the other 
is wrong. Yet the American would not laugh 
at the idea of the Kaiser's "Ich und Gott" 
were he a Prussian; and the Prussian would not 
sneer at our little army and our bungling way 
of doing things military were he an American. 

It cannot be expected that a family strictly 
brought up on the lines of a military autocracy, 
and one which has brought itseK up on the 
broadest theories of democracy, can have many 
notions in common as to the ways and means 
of defending the home, save the great essen- 
tial — to be willing, and ready, to fight. 

149 



ARE WE READY? 

Recent events across the Atlantic would 
seem to indicate that the German family, on 
instant notice, was both. Certain facts and fig- 
ures set down in the course of previous chap- 
ters seem to suggest that the American peo- 
ple, though willing, are not at all ready. 

The first is no proof that the Prussian idea 
is right any more than the second is proof that 
the American idea is wrong. 

There is one fact which the average American 
finds it diflScult to swallow. It is this: Funda- 
damentally, the German military idea is more 
democratic than ours. The application of the 
idea, of course, is diametrically opposed to 
the principles of democracy. Yet the German 
fighting force is directly from the citizenship. 
Democracy has swung away from the profes- 
sional soldier of a hundred and fifty years ago. 
The British, ourselves — and China — of the 
world's great nations, are the only ones in 
whose military systems there is a survival of 
the days of Frederick the Great. "With the 
abhorrence of anything approaching military 
rule, bred in the bone of the Anglo-Saxon, we 

150 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

have taken elaborate means of insuring the sub- 
ordination of the miHtary to the civil authority. 

Modern economists very generally agree 
that the danger of the professional soldier to 
a democracy, not so safe-guarded, is his eager- 
ness to practice his profession — his hanker- 
ing to try out new tools placed in his hands. 
Yet, go to the soldier of long experience, and 
he will tell you how silly this notion is. He will 
insist that the experienced soldier dreads war, 
because he knows what war is; just as a sur- 
geon dreads to be operated upon, because he 
knows the danger and suffering that an opera- 
tion entails. 

Be that as it may, the fact is that, no matter 
how much we have subordinated him, we still 
have the professional soldier, and that in the 
Prussian system the professional soldier, the 
man who carries the gun, has been discarded 
for the citizen fighter. It is true, of course, that 
most of the oflBcers, particularly the higher offi- 
cers and the general staff, are all professionals, 
making a study of war their life-work. 

Militarism is not a thing. It is not a form of 
151 



ARE WE READY? 

government. It is not even a system, wholly. 
It is a state of mind. That is a fact that we 
Americans find it difficult to get hold of. In 
Germany, militarism is superimposed on a 
democratic theory of national defense, evolved 
by Prussia after Napoleon, through sheer 
necessity. The armies that Prussia poured into 
the field in 1813 were no longer professional but 
citizen forces, poorly trained and organized, 
but fired with patriotism and enthusiasm. 
After the war, the Prussian rulers sagaciously 
made permanent the system found to be so 
effective. That system, though modified and 
enlarged upon, was substantially the same as 
that now in force. The victories of 1866 and 
1870 thoroughly popularized it. The military 
alliance in 1866 between Prussia and all the 
other German States, with the union in 1871 
of all the armies, opened the way for model- 
ing the whole German military force after the 
Prussian pattern. The system of a citizen 
army, once laughed at by the French as a 
"sort of militia," is essentially the marvelous 
war machine of to-day. 

152 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

The militarism so abhorrent to us is not this 
machine, not the German system of govern- 
ment, not compulsory military service, nor yet 
wholly the Prussian influence personified in the 
Kaiser and his advisers. No doubt all these 
elements go into it, but the militarism of Ger- 
many is the state of mind of the German people. 

Such an impartial observer as R. M. Berry, 
in his ''Germany of the Germans," has this to 
say of this German state of mind: — 

That the army is the people can perhaps be 
asserted of Germany more than of any other na- 
tion. Every citizen considers service in the na- 
tional defensive forces as a natural duty. He thinks 
it unworthy of any nation that its men should need 
to have attractions offered them in order to induce 
them to take their proper share in the defense of 
their country. Patriotism is a cult among the Ger- 
mans. The German youth, as a general rule, looks 
forward with pleasure to the day when he is to don 
the uniform, and if, for some physical reason, he 
should be rejected, he feels that he has not quite 
proved his manliness. . . . The soldier is held up 
to him as the pattern which he should follow. . . . 
*'For the people, but not by the people," is the 
motto that has been adopted by the Empire ever 
since Bismarck's effort to limit the spread of Social- 

153 



ARE WE READY? 

ism by introducing State-enforced thrift. . . . The 
masses of the people in Germany are always treated 
by the official classes as minors requiring guardian- 
ship with many restrictions. Since this method has 
been in vogue for so long a time, the Germans, al- 
most to a man, expect all ameliorations of their 
condition, political as well as economical, to be 
proposed by the administrative authorities. They 
would not dream of initiating anything of the kind 
themselves. . . . The officer occupies a privileged 
position, which is inviolable by the civil authori- 
ties. He takes precedence everywhere. . . . There 
is in some quarters a very strong argument urged 
against this system of paternal government, — 
that it destroys individuality and takes away the 
personal will of the people. They become so used 
to obeying orders that they cannot think for them- 
selves in politics. Spontaneity is not requisite for 
them. The Government sees to all things : the peo- 
ple only need to do what they are told. . . . One 
of the most striking features of German life is 
that the people have so little understanding of the 
way in which they are governed. In other things 
the German can recite long lists of data without 
the slightest hesitation, but in politics he replies 
with a blank look when questioned. It has never 
impressed him as necessary that he should compre- 
hend politics. He is governed — as a rule well; that 
is sufficient for him. 

154 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

How much of this is due to Prussian influ- 
ence, how much to the personahty of the Kai- 
ser, how much to the leaders in the Prussian 
mihtary cult, how much to the long compul- 
sory military service, and how much is due to 
the racial temper of the German, writers disa- 
gree. That the Kaiser's '' There is but one mas- 
ter in the country — myself. I will tolerate no 
other"; and "It is the soldier and the army, 
not majorities and parliamentary decisions 
that have forged the unity of the German 
Empire. It is on the army that my confi- 
dence rests"; and "The army and its sov- 
ereign head are the only guarantees of the 
safety of the empire and the peace of the 
world," are accepted seriously, cannot be ques- 
tioned. To me it is inconceivable that, no 
matter what extreme measures might be 
taken to increase our preparedness against 
attack, militarism in any form, as we under- 
stand the militarism of Prussia, could gain a 
foothold in our nation. 

But before w^e get around to talking about 
ourselves: — 

155 



ARE WE READY? 

Over across the way from the Kaiser and 
his family, there is a family that is boss of itself 
and thoroughly well able to take care of itself. 

There is a world of difference betv/een "the 
army is the people" and "the people are the 
army." There is just that much difference be- 
tween Germany and Switzerland; between the 
Prussian system and the Swiss system; be- 
tween Prussian militarism and Swiss democ- 
racy. 

Yet, at bottom, the German idea and the 
Swiss idea are identical. The armies of both 
come directly from the citizenship. The differ- 
ence is in the manner in which the citizenship 
has allowed the idea to be applied. 

Switzerland, certainly the most democratic 
nation in Europe, held by some writers to be 
the world's model state since the adoption of 
the constitution of 1874, has no standing army. 
Its only permanent military officers are mili- 
tary trainers, selected by and under the super- 
vision of the general government. 

With a population of about 4,000,000 at an 
expenditure of less than $8,000,000 annually, 

156 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

the Swiss Confederation can, in an hour of 
need, muster a fighting force of 500,000 men, 
trained and perfectly equipped. 

With a population of over 90,000,000, it 
costs the Republic of the United States in the 
neighborhood of $90,000,000 to maintain a 
professional military organization which, in 
emergency could throw a bare 30,000 men, 
incompletely equipped, into line of battle. 
Where the money goes and what we get for it 
we have already seen. The subject is intricate. 

To trace the Swiss eight millions into a first- 
class defensive force of haK a million is exceed- 
ingly simple. The money goes for training, 
clothing, and equipment, and pay of soldiers 
and officers while they are with the colors. It 
is not wasted in politics because it is next to 
impossible to play politics with the Swiss mili- 
tary system. 

Every male citizen of Switzerland, who is 
able, receives military training for certain 
short periods between the ages of seventeen 
and thirty-two. Every two years, for the first 
ten years, — that is, five times in all, — he 

157 



ARE WE READY? 

answers a call to the colors. His period of 
training is never more than ninety days for any 
one year and that only in the first year. If an 
artillery recruit, his training covers seventy- 
five days; if in the cavalry, ninety days; and if 
in the infantry, sixty days. The period with 
the colors shortens as he grows older. During 
his third, fifth, seventh, and ninth years, this 
period of training is from twelve to fifteen days. 
He is paid only during the time he is with the 
colors. More than that, so far as is possible, his 
military training is made to follow the lines of 
his occupation. If he is a baker, he finds his 
place in the commissary; if he is an electrician, 
he can enter the engineers or the signal corps. 
The Swiss soldier has as good a chance of be- 
coming an officer as any of his fellows. Offi- 
cers are drawn from the ranks according to 
seniority. The appointing power rests with the 
Government. 

"Compulsory service!" 

Those are the other scare-words, the team- 
mates of ''militarism." 

The Swiss military training is the law of the 
158 



",^.-^z-;^# 




THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

land, certainly, even if it has become so by 
vote of all the people. Its relation to democ- 
racy depends to some extent on whether you 
argue that a person can be compelled to do 
what he wants to do. 

The Swiss youth, from his earliest school 
days, is taught that the army is for defense 
only. Patriotism is interwoven in his develop- 
ment. He discerns no line between civic duty 
and military duty. He learns to look upon 
each as essential to real citizenship. By the 
time he leaves school he is not a raw recruit. 
He has already had some military training. 
He is ready and eager to join the colors and to 
complete his education. Certainly he does not 
regard as undemocratic or unreasonable the 
requirement that he must know how to fight in 
order that he may take an intelligent part in 
the defense of his country, any more than we 
consider undemocratic and unreasonable the 
requirement that we must know how to read in 
order that we may take an intelligent part in 
the political affairs of our country. 

Australia is another country which has been 
159 



ARE WE READY? 

working out a system of defense that has 
attracted the attention of the world's great 
powers. Within a very few years the mihtary 
theory there has developed along lines which 
have converted a hired police force into a 
powerful organization of citizen soldiery. 

The responsibility for the defense of Aus- 
tralia prior to 1870 rested on British troops 
which were quartered in the largest cities. 
The chief function of these troops was that of 
a convict guard. In any emergency where war 
threatened, the only measures of defense which 
could be taken, except those which would be 
afforded by the professional soldiers, depended 
upon the organization of volunteers. 

It was in 1870 that all British troops were 
withdrawn from Australia. It was then that 
small bodies of permanent forces were formed, 
and it was the intention to build around these 
small detachments an organization of citizen 
fighters. The first experiment, in 1883 to 1884, 
was a partially paid volunteer militia. 

A system of military instruction in schools 
for boys was established at this time. This 

160 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

system of cadets was purely of a volunteer 
nature, and did not offer the means of military 
training to boys who could not, or for any rea- 
son did not, attend these schools. It was ten 
years before the system was so altered and 
extended that opportunity was given for the 
training of boys who were qualified to take a 
part in the defense of the country, but who did 
not attend school. 

The system was found to be unsatisfactory 
to so marked a degree that in 1909 compulsory 
military training became the law. This law 
became operative on June 30, 1911, when the 
volunteer system of military training came to 
an end and compulsory training began. 

The military and naval forces were divided 
into permanent and citizen organizations; the 
one bound for a definite term of service, the 
other not so bound. Until 1911 the permanent 
forces were designated as the militia and were 
paid, and the remaining citizen soldiers were 
classed as volunteers, not ordinarily paid for 
their service, but provided with a reserve 
which included members of rifle clubs and men 

161 



ARE WE READY? 

who had seen active service at some other 
time. 

Up to the time that the compulsory training 
law became operative, enlistment was volun- 
tary in time of peace. Between the ages of 
eighteen and sixty years, all male citizens were 
declared to be members of the army and liable 
to service, in time of war, within the territorial 
limits of Australia only. The departure from 
the old theory was a most radical one. The 
Act of 1909 was the direct outcome of a popu- 
lar belief that the defense of Australia under 
the volunteer system was wholly insufficient. 

The important section of the new law reads 
as follows : — 

All male inhabitants of Australia (excepting 
those who are exempted by this Act), who have 
resided therein for six months and are British sub- 
jects, shall be liable to be trained as follows: (a) 
from 12 to 14 years of age in the junior cadets; 
(6) from 14 to 18 years of age in the senior cadets; 
(c) from 18 to 26 years of age in the citizen forces; 
provided that, except in time of imminent danger 
or war, the last year of service in the citizen forces 
shall be limited to one registration or one muster 
parade. 

162 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

At about the age when the average American 
youth is tormenting his neighbors with "bean- 
shooters" and making the hfe of the family cat 
almost unendurable with the inevitable air- 
gun, the Australian youth is beginning to get 
the beginnings of a training that will even- 
tually turn him out as a trained unit of his 
country's defense. 

On July 1 of his twelfth year, every Aus- 
tralian boy who has been found to be physi- 
cally, morally, and mentally fit, becomes a 
junior cadet. The Government gives him a hat, 
a shirt, breeches, puttees, and shoes. He re- 
ceives ninety hours of military training each 
year for two years, when he graduates into the 
ranks of the senior cadets. For four years he is 
put through a course of drilling, marching, dis- 
ciplining, the handling of arms, physical train- 
ing, guard duty, and elementary tactics. Each 
year he receives a minimum of four four-hour 
drills, twelve two-hour drills, and twenty-four 
one-hour drills. Upon entering the senior ca- 
dets, he becomes the proud possessor of a 
cadet rifle and belt. If, as a marksman, he 

163 



ARE WE READY? 

can meet certain stipulated requirements, he 
is allowed to handle a man's-size gun and to 
take part in target practice with the service 
rifle. 

Military experts, comparing the rifle fi.re of 
the soldiers of the European nations involved 
in the present war, invariably comment on the 
marked superiority of the British over the 
German riflemen. They agree that this supe- 
riority is due to the fact that the Englishman 
finds his target before he pulls the trigger. Be- 
fore the missile leaves its chamber Tommy 
Atkins is pretty sure on the one thing that the 
German has the vaguest notion about — where 
death in a steel jacket is going to. Likewise, 
those theories once propounded by profound 
students of things military, that rifle fire and 
other forms of close-range killing would play 
a very small part in modern warfare, have 
been exploded by what is happening every day 
in Europe. 

The British passion for expert marksman- 
ship is reflected in the Australian military sys- 
tem. Not only does the senior cadet have the 

164 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

opportunity of reaching his ambition of shoot- 
ing with a real war gun, but he knows that 
when he is nineteen years old he is to become 
a full-fledged member of the citizen force of 
his country. 

At that time he receives, in addition to his 
previous equipment, two woolen shirts, two 
pairs of breeches, an overcoat, a hat, a sleeping- 
cap, two pairs of leggings, two pairs of shoes, 
a kit pack, service rifle, and bayonet. 

As a citizen soldier, he must each year re- 
ceive not less than the equivalent of sixteen 
whole days' training, eight of which must be 
in camps of continuous training. 

From the time of his junior cadetship, the 
natural tendencies of the youth are observed, 
and to a great extent he is allowed to follow his 
bent in fitting himself for a part in the coun- 
try's defense. By the time he is past his junior 
and senior cadetship s, what arm of the service 
he is best fitted for is usually very apparent. 
From the time that he is graduated from the 
ranks of the senior cadets until he is twenty- 
five years old, he receives infantry and cavalry 

165 



ARE WE READY? 

drill or staff corps training. To attend one 
muster parade is all that is required of him in 
his twenty-sixth year, when he is discharged 
from "active service." Not until he is sixty 
years of age, however, does he cease to be sub- 
ject to a call to the colors in time of war. To 
win a discharge in his twenty-sixth year he 
must be able to show twelve annual certificates 
of proficiency, which have been issued by a 
board of officers by whom he is examined at 
the end of every year of his training. If in any 
year he fails to pass the efficiency board of 
examiners, he must repeat that year of train- 
ing. 

The citizen soldier of Australia receives pro- 
motion based entirely upon merit. 

Under the Defense Act, the following classes 
of exemptions exist: persons physically, men- 
tally, or morally unfit, members and officers of 
Parliament, judges, police, prison employees, 
ministers of religion, lighthouse keepers, and 
physicians and nurses of public hospitals. The 
Governor-General may by proclamation vary 
or extend these exemptions or he may exempt 

166 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

specified areas. Persons whose religion or be- 
lief prohibits them from bearing arms may 
be exempted from service in the combatant 
branches, but are Uable for service in the sup- 
ply departments, and in every case the burden 
of proof rests upon the person claiming exemp- 
tion. 

If a parent or guardian fails or refuses to 
register a son or ward who is of the proper age 
for service, or if any employer, of the type in- 
clined to subordinate the national interest to 
his greed for money, interferes in any way with 
the military service of his employees, he is sub- 
ject to a heavy fine. Employers are not re- 
quired to pay employees during the time they 
are on military duty. 

Now the Australian Army is the manhood 
of the country — trained for military defense. 

The Swiss Army, though the systems differ 
in certain details, is the same. 

The United States Army is an organiza- 
tion of a few thousand professional soldiers, 
backed by the manhood of the country, un- 
trained. 

167 



ARE WE READY? 

American manhood is in no way inferior to 
Swiss or Australian manhood. 

American patriotism is in no way inferior to 
Swiss or AustraUan patriotism. 

We pride ourselves, with reason, on our in- 
dependent spirit and the courage to back it. 
Spirit and courage are about all we have in a 
military way. Are they sufficient for any situ- 
ation we may find ourselves in ? 

Our theory of defense, laid down by Wash- 
ington, and changed very little since then, is 
generally considered to be both sound and ade- 
quate. That theory contemplates a small pro- 
fessional army as a nucleus combined with the 
organized militia as a first line of defense, and 
the whole backed by the citizenship. Admin- 
istration after administration has pointed out 
our failure to apply this theory and the perils 
that lurk in our negligence. Taft, Roosevelt, 
and Wilson, Root, Stimson, and Garrison, as 
well as the chief men of our military establish- 
ment, have all at intervals had something to 
say on this subject. 

Woodrow Wilson, in his message to Con- 
168 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

gress, during the closing days of 1914, said 
this : — 

We must depend in every time of national peril, 
in the future as in the past, not upon a standing 
army, nor yet upon a reserve army, but upon a cit- 
izenry trained and accustomed to arms. It will be 
right enough — right American policy, based upon 
our accustomed principles and practices — to pro- 
vide a system by which every citizen who will vol- 
unteer for the training may be made familiar with 
the use of modern arms, the rudiments of drill and 
maneuver, and the maintenance and sanitation 
of camps. We should encourage such training and 
make it a means of discipline which our young men 
will learn to value. It is right that we should pro- 
vide it not only, but that we should make it as 
attractive as possible, and so induce our young 
men to undergo it at such times as they can com- 
mand a little freedom and can seek the physical 
development they need, for mere health's sake, if 
for nothing more. Every means by which such 
things can be stimulated is legitimate, and such a 
method smacks of true American ideas. It is right, 
too, that the National Guard of the States should 
be developed and strengthened by every means 
which is not inconsistent with our obligations to 
our own people or with the established policy of 
our Government. And this, also, not because the 

169 



ARE WE READY? 

time or occasion specially calls for such measures, 
but because it should be our constant policy to make 
these provisions for our national peace and safety. 
More than this carries with it a reversal of the 
whole history and character of our policy. More 
than this, proposed at this time, permit me to say, 
would mean merely that we had lost our self-pos- 
session, that we had been thrown off our balance 
by a war with which we have nothing to do, whose 
causes cannot touch us, whose very existence affords 
us opportunities of friendship and disinterested 
service which should make us ashamed of any 
thought of hostility or fearful preparation for 
trouble. 

In his Annual Report of 1914, Lindley M. 
Garrison, as Secretary of War, had the follow- 
ing comment to make on this point: — 

It would be premature to attempt now to draw 
the ultimate lessons from the war in Europe. It is 
an imperative duty, however, to heed so much of 
what it brings home to us as is incontrovertible 
and not to be changed by any event, leaving for 
later and more detailed and comprehensive consid- 
eration what its later developments and final con- 
clusions may indicate. 

For orderly treatment certain preliminary con- 
siderations may be usefully adverted to. It is, of 
course, not necessary to dwell on the blessings of 

170 




COLLEGE STUDENTS LEARNING THE FINE POINTS OF 
TRENCH-DIGGING 




A STUDENT SOLDIERS' MESS 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

peace and the horrors of war. Every one desires 
peace, just as every one desires health, content- 
ment, affection, sufficient means for comfortable 
existence, and other similarly beneficent things. 
But peace and the other states of being just men- 
tioned are not always or even often solely within 
one's own control. Those who are thoughtful and 
have courage face the facts of life, take lessons from 
experience, and strive by wise conduct to attain 
the desirable things, and by prevision and precau- 
tion to protect and defend them when obtained. It 
may truthfully be said that eternal vigilance is the 
price which must be paid in order to obtain the de- 
sirable things of life and to defend them. 

In collective affairs the interests of the group 
are confided to the Government, and it thereupon 
is charged with the duty to preserve and defend 
these things. The Government must exercise for 
the Nation the precautionary, defensive, and pre- 
servative measures necessary to that end. All gov- 
ernments must therefore have force — physical 
force — i.e., military force — for these purposes. 
The question for each nation when this matter is 
under consideration, is. How much force should it 
have and of what should that force consist .^^ 

We already have our nucleus for defense — 
a very expensive one — well trained, well offi- 
cered, and moderately well equipped. For a 

171 



ARE WE READY? 

nucleus it is pretty well scattered. Washing- 
ton, of course, could not foresee that we should 
have to maintain fighting men at such distances 
as the Philippines, Hawaii, and Panama. 

Back of this nucleus, in accordance with the 
original idea, we have the militia, each state 
organization adequate for local needs, no 
doubt, but woefully lacking as a first line of 
national defense — its theoretical function. 
Our militia as a whole is so incompletely organ- 
ized and so inadequately equipped that it would 
be next to powerless if pitted against a well- 
prepared foe under modern methods of warfare. 

As a nation, we have a lot of family pride. 
We are warlike, but not military. We are quick 
to resent insult and very confident of our abil- 
ity to maintain our position. With unlimited 
military resources there is no doubt that we 
are abundantly able to take care of ourselves. 
But we are apt to forget that war has developed 
from a glacier to an avalanche; that modern 
international blows are struck unexpectedly 
and with lightning quickness; and that in a 
time of desperate and sudden necessity, unde- 

172 



THE GREAT AMERICAN BUGABOO 

veloped resources of men and materials would 
be as useless as would be an undeveloped gold 
mine in Alaska in a Wall Street panic. 

Our family has men, money, and materials 
more than sufficient for any military need. 
But we lack group and individual team work. 
No one has yet devised a successful scheme 
for securing effective military cooperation be- 
tween the States and the Federal Government. 
Jasper and Henry and Brother Hiram are all 
tied up in their local troubles. They are fight- 
ers, every last one of them, but they have n't 
had time nor a desire to spend the money nec- 
essary to prepare themselves for trouble that 
might involve everybody. Such an emergency 
has appeared to us all to be the very remotest 
possibihty. Satisfied with our natural strength, 
we have had but the vaguest concern as to 
what shape we should be in if we should be 
brought suddenly to face the necessity of 
getting together for the defense of all. 

There is a growing conviction that this is 
not wisdom and that it is not fair to the httle 
body of men whom we hire to protect us. 

173 



ARE WE READY? 

This conviction, for a long time, has been 
crystallizing, in some quarters, into a deter- 
mination to find a way out. Some of our states- 
men and military men, notably former Secre- 
tary of War Henry L. Stimson, and former 
Chief of Staff Leonard Wood, have been grap- 
pling with the problem. The Swiss idea and 
the military theories of other nations have 
been given the closest study. 

A start has already been made; a beginning 
of a system of genuine and adequate citizen 
defense which already has received the endorse- 
ment of President Wilson, Secretary of War 
Garrison, President Hibben of Princeton, 
President Lowell of Harvard, President Had- 
ley of Yale, and other men of equal standing. 

And not one of them suggests the peril of 
militarism ! 



CHAPTER IX 
THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

Those gentlemen who have been teUing us 
that the United States is the only first-class 
nation in the world which has no military 
reserve must have a care lest they be put down 
as jingos, attempting to create hysteria by 
inflammable and inaccurate utterances. 

We have a reserve. It consists of 16 men. 
At least, it did up to November 15, 1914. Some 
of it may have departed this life by the time 
these pages reach the press; but the chances 
are that it is safe and accurate to say that our 
reserve to-day is about what it was in the mid- 
dle of November, 1914. 

We have a reserve law, too. Under its pro- 
visions a man intending to enlist in the regular 
army has the privilege at the time of his enlist- 
ment of expressing a wish that he be discharged 
on furlough when he has served his term, and 
be held subject to recall to the colors at any 

175 



ARE WE READY? 

time his services may be needed. In twenty- 
four months this law produced the 16 reserv- 
ists. 

And there we are. 

The law is a joke — just as much of a joke as 
the "American Landsturm." If by any chance 
war should be brought our way by any first- 
class nation on earth, the joke would instantly 
become a tragedy; and it is the purpose of this 
volume to serve in its small way in presenting 
facts and figures that may assist the Ameri- 
can people in reaching some conclusion as to 
whether our small regular army and our incom- 
plete and poorly organized militia are sufficient 
military protection for this country. 

The territory of continental United States 
is about 3,027,000 square miles, with a popu- 
lation of about 99,000,000. There are 590,800 
square miles in Alaska and a population of 
about 65,000. We have spent $400,000,000 as 
an investment in the Panama Canal. In 
Hawaii, the population of 192,000 is contained 
within 6500 square miles. The area of Porto 
Rico is about 3600 square miles, with a popu- 

176 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

lation of 1,118,000. In the Philippine Islands, 
with 127,800 square miles, there is a population 
of 7,640,000. 

Our military responsibilities over this scat- 
tered area are both heavy and complicated. 
The distribution of our regular army of less 
than 90,000 men has been described in detail 
in a previous chapter. 

The most superficial study of our standing 
mihtary forces and the duties which devolve 
upon them, reveals immediately the utter folly 
of contending that our available military forces 
could cope successfully with even as small an 
army as 200,000 trained men of any first-class 
power. In his Report for 1914, Lindley M. 
Garrison, as Secretary of War, compared our 
peace and war strength with those of other 
nations, as shown on the following page. 

Mr. Garrison's figures for the United States 
are generous. They include the Philippine 
scouts and the organized militia. As has been 
previously pointed out, there is a vast difference 
between paper strength and actual strength. 
It is the opinion of those who have given the 

177 



ARE WE READY? 





Area 
(square miles) 


Population 


Peace 
strength 


Total 

trained war 

strength 


Germany 


208,830 


64,903,423 


620,000 


4,000,000 


France 


207,054 


38,961,945 


560,000 


3,000,000 


Russia 


8,647,657 


160,095,200 


1,200,000 


4,500,000 


Great Britain 






and colonies 


11,467,294 


396,294,752 


254,500 


800.000 


Italy 


110,550 


32,475,253 


275,000 


1,200,000 


Austria-Hun- 










, gary 


261,035 


49,418,596 


360,000 


2,000,000 


Japan 


147.655 


53,875,390 


230,000 


1,200,000 


Turkey 


1,186,874 


35,764,876 


420,000 


1,200,000 


Spain 


194,783 


19,503,008 


115,000 


300,000 


Switzerland. . . 


15,976 


3,741,971 


140,000 


275,000 


Sweden 


172,876 


5,476,441 


75,000 


400,000 


Belgium 


11,373 


7,074,910 


42,000 


180,000 


United States. 


3,026,789 


98,781,324 


97,760 


1225,170 



1 Including Philippine scouts and Organized Militia. 

closest study to this subject that the actual 
and immediate war strength of our regular 
army and militia combined, including combat- 
ants and non-combatants and troops in for- 
eign service, is not more than 140,000 men; and 
that the total armed force which we could 
assemble on instant notice at any one point 
within the continental limits of the United 
States, a force which could be looked to for 
immediate resistance of invasion, is not more 
than 50,000 men, including regular troops and 
militia. The whole outfit could be put into the 

178 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

Yale Bowl, and there would be room left for a 
good-sized crowd of admiring sisters. 

Mr. Garrison's figures for Switzerland, on 
the other hand, are most conservative. Swit- 
zerland really has no standing army. Its per- 
manent establishment consists of a general 
staff and a small number of recruiting, supply, 
and instructor officers. With a population of 
4,000,000, Switzerland, in 1912, had a mili- 
tary force of 490,340 men, fully organized and 
equipped, well trained and disciplined, and 
instantly available. Incidentally, the mihtary 
expense of the Government for that year was 
$8,299,941, or $16.77 per man. Our regular 
soldier costs us about $1000 each year. Mr. 
Garrison's figures for England, France, and 
Russia were low. The peace armies of these 
countries were greatly augmented subsequent 
to his report. 

Back of our hired regular force, and back of 
our militia, we have 16 trained men as listed 
reservists ! 

Back of the whole is the citizenship — a 
179 



ARE WE READY? 

citizenship second to none in the world in 
hardihood, courage, inteUigence, and patriot- 
ism. That this citizenship, in any conflict 




Boardman Robinson, del. 
WE HAVE 16 TRAINED MEN AS LISTED RESERVISTS 

with any power on earth, would ultimately 
triumph, we none of us question. 

What do we want to pay in life, property, 
and treasure, for ultimate triumph.^ About 
that question centers the whole military prob- 
lem of the United States. There are two pos- 
sible answers to it: — 

180 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

Either we can continue to ignore the prin- 
ciples of our miHtary pohcy; 

Or we can devise means whereby our whole 
citizenship will have opportunity to re- 
ceive military training. 

In other words : — 

We shall have a reserve; 

Or we shall not have a reserve. 

Or still another way: — 

We shall continue to throw the whole burden 
of first defense on a handful of professional 
hired soldiers; 

Or we shall undertake to fit ourselves intel- 
ligently to back our hired men in time of 
national peril. 

It all means that: — 

We shajl continue to invite trouble by our 
unpreparedness for it; 

Or we shall discourage foreign trouble- 
seekers by being ready for any military 
emergenc?y. 

Those of us who spend our week-ends in 
automobiles would feel a certain sense of dis- 
grace if our neighbors should catch us start- 

181 



ARE WE READY? 

ing out without our extra tire. Some of us are 
inclined to surround ourselves with an atmos- 
phere of disgusting prosperity by packing 
along two extras; and if we head away on a 
particularly long, rough, dangerous, or impor- 
tant trip, a few of us carry a whole extra set. 

What is more, we take pains in providing 
tires that fit our rims. Think of it! We make 
sure that tires and rims match. Why, we even 
insist that the threads of our extra spark plugs 
shall match up with the threads that are to 
receive them; and that extra parts shall be 
especially designed for our particular machine. 
Yet nobody ever accuses us of letting these 
precautions for safety, convenience, and com- 
fort interfere with our commercial, profes- 
sional, or domestic duties and activities. It 
is most remarkable. 

Now I am not ready to admit that this di- 
gression is far-fetched. 

Our army is a machine — a most expensive 
one. A nation keeps a military machine on 
hand for use in emergency. Its efficiency as a 

182 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

nation's economic possession depends upon 
the fighting power it can develop and maintain 
in conflict. 

As soon as a mihtary machine is used in 
actual warfare, it immediately becomes sub- 
ject to heavy losses. Wear and tear begins. 
Parts are broken, destroyed, lost through sick- 
ness or desertion, or stolen. 

Not all the losses are directly due to vio- 
lence. Some come through disease, some 
through the hard going — the hardships of a 
campaign. In its marches to Sedan the Prus- 
sian Guard lost 5000 men. The Guard had to 
arrive at a given place on time, and the neces- 
sary speed of marching was more destructive 
than battle. The members of that Guard were 
trained soldiers. Raw, soft troops would never 
have arrived at all, in all probabihty. 

We spend large amounts of money to main- 
tain military forces through long periods of 
peace which we count upon to meet a com- 
paratively brief emergency in war. It would 
appear to be sound economics as well as ordi- 
nary horse sense that the war eflSciency of our 

183 



ARE WE READY? 

machine should be commensurate with the 
money we spend on it in time of peace. 

It is not — by any means. 

In spite of the fact that we know that our 
fighting machine will, in war, immediately de- 
teriorate unless we provide for replacing loss 
and destruction of its parts, both trivial and 
vital, we have, throughout our military history, 
persisted in ignoring the peril that is involved 
in our neglect to apply the sound and funda- 
mental principles of our established military 
policy. 

It has been proved by cold figures and broad 
averages that in modern warfare any given 
unit loses near to fifty per cent of its initial 
strength during the first six months of a con- 
flict. If the parts making up this loss are not 
replaced with other identical parts, the fight- 
ing machine loses at least haK its power. If 
the lost and destroyed parts are replaced by 
inferior and ill-fitting ones, the initial eflFec- 
tiveness of the machine is destroyed in the 
ratio of the rapidity with which the new parts 
can be remodeled and adjusted. 

184 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

Remodeling and readjusting mean careful 
training. Training can be accomplished eco- 
nomically in time of peace or at a frightful cost 
during the progress of actual war. 

The United States is the only great nation 
of the world that chooses the latter course. In 
all the wars in our history, the units first sent 
into the field have shrunk; and as they dwin- 
dled, new bodies, untrained, and under un- 
trained officers, have been organized, and 
sent into the line of battle. The results from 
the Revolution down have been a demonstra- 
tion that continued and persistent fighting is 
impossible under such a system. With almost 
every battle followed by exhaustion, disorgan- 
ization, and a period of inactivity, our wars 
have dragged out their weary course, taking a 
toll of life and treasure out of all proportion to 
the sacrifice that would be necessary under a 
system of military preparedness. 

Our military peace organization is the auto- 
mobile stripped down to the motor, chassis, 
and driving gears. Not only should there be 
at hand the necessary spare parts, but there 

185 



ARE WE READY? 

should be accessible the means for building it 
up completely without confusion at a mo- 
ment's notice. 

The army was never intended to be more 
than the peace skeleton for an adequate war 
force. Our forebears went on the assumption 
that we would supply ourselves with the means 
of expansion. That we have not done so can 
be charged to the negligence of our legislators, 
not to those in charge of our military affairs. 
An adequate reserve of trained men would 
mean that, at the present time and in the future, 
our standing forces should be kept at the ab- 
solute minimum consistent with the military 
obligations devolving upon us in time of peace, 
and our security in the face of a threatened 
invasion. 

Suppose that an invasion actually threat- 
ened. Suppose that, in the opinion of our mili- 
tary experts, an army of 100,000 men were 
necessary successfully to repel an attack by 
land. Not only should we have to put these 
100,000 trained men into the field, but we 
should have to maintain a force of that size 

186 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

throughout a campaign. We should have to 
avoid, first of all, a lowering of the efficiency of 
the initial force through the absorption of raw 
recruits to replace the first losses. We should 
assume, with good ground, that during the first 
six months of fighting, we should lose about 
fifty per cent of our initial fighting line. If the 
training of recruits were begun at once, some 
of the new men would be ready to go to the 
front before the expiration of the six months. 
Perhaps we might be able so to train 25,000 
raw recruits. In order, therefore, to maintain 
100,000 men at top efficiency during six months 
of war, our fighting force would have to have 
an initial strength of 125,000 trained men. 

All this is based on the assumption of our 
military organization being without trained 
reserves. With the average cost of each soldier 
$1000, this force would cost us $125,000,000 
per year. 

Suppose that, under these same circum- 
stances, we had at hand a trained reserve of 
50,000 men. Our professional military estab- 
lishment, then, could be limited to 75,000 men, 

187 



ARE WE READY? 

and it has been estimated that the cost per 
year for maintaining such a force at top efB- 
ciency would not be more than $75,000,000. 
The war effectiveness of such a peace organi- 
zation would be as high as the larger standing 
army. 

We can't seem to get it out of our national 
head that the "Indian Days" are past. In 
those days the longer we held a man in the serv- 
ice, the better he became acquainted with the 
ways of the redskin and the more efficient as 
an Indian fighter he was. To-day we need men 
ready for any emergency — sound in body 
and trained for modern warfare. Yet we persist 
in looking upon our army as a police force. 
The longer a policeman deals with crooks and 
criminals, the more efficient he is in locating 
criminals and suppressing crime. Only in ac- 
tual warfare is this true of the soldier. In time 
of peace he can only study military science and 
keep his body in trim to apply what he has 
learned. Our police-force system of enlistment, 
as a matter of pure business, is ridiculous. We 
take a man into the army, train him, and pay 

188 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

him the most at the time that he is least effi- 
cient — when he is on the down grade. And we 
have very few of him, at that. 

Suppose we took him for a very short period 
of enhstment, and at the end of it returned him 
to civil life, thereafter calling him to the colors 
only for a few days' brushing up each year, and 
in time of war. He would cost not more than 
$100 a year. The regular soldier costs about 
$1000. For what we pay for each regular, we 
could have ten reservists. And the reservist 
would be in all respects the equal of the regular 
as a unit of defense. 

The regular army was designed originally 
to be, among other things, a training school. 
It has proved its efficiency in this respect, but 
year after year we have continued the policy 
of educating and training our citizens who 
have enUsted in the regular army, and then of 
returning them to private life without provid- 
ing any means of assuring ourselves of their 
further services if ever required. 

We shall, of course, always need a regular 
force sufficient for garrison duty at home and 

189 



ARE WE READY? 

abroad. But if we ever decide to substitute, 
for minimum defensive strength at maximum 
cost, maximum strength at minimum cost, we 
are going to find the trained reserve the easy 
and democratic way out. 

The time that must be consumed in making 
an efficient soldier out of a raw recruit in the 
regular army training-school is a matter con- 
cerning which there is a rather wide diver- 
gence of opinion. Averaging the views of mili- 
tary men of long experience, it can be safely 
said that the regular army can turn out a sol- 
dier in twelve months. From my talks with 
leading military men, I am inclined to the be- 
hef that a recruit of average intelligence and 
good habits can be made an effective fighting 
unit within six months. It is a fact that has 
been established that any young man of good 
health and average mental equipment can be 
fitted for military service within that time. 
Under a system of intensive training, the ex- 
periment has been successfully tried in other 
countries. 

What is more, there is no good reason why 
190 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

the militia organizations, as well as the regular 
army, should not be useful as military training- 
schools. 

Should Congress suddenly decide, after long 
years of inactivity, that it is in the interest 
of the nation to put something beside high- 
sounding utterances complimentary to the 
manhood of the nation behind our hired sol- 
diers and our militiamen, and should it enact 
legislation under which a reserve strength could 
be built up, we should still be without the one 
great essential for turning recruits into trained 
soldiers. We have hardly enough officers for 
our present regular army, and not nearly 
enough efficient officers to bring our militia to 
the degree of organization and effectiveness 
which it should have. Theoretically, we should 
have sufficient officers in the regular army to 
assist in the training of the militia, and if we 
should decide that it would be good business 
for us, in addition, to have a reserve, we should 
have absolutely no officers available to handle 
the detail of organizing, training, and admin- 
istering the reserve, not to mention the fact 

191 



ARE WE READY? 

that if the regular army should be expanded 
with reserve troops, we should not have any- 
where near enough leaders to handle the larger 
force in time of war. 

"If we were called upon to mobilize to meet 
a jQrst-class power," said General Leonard 
Wood, recently, "we should require immedi- 
ately several thousand officers. Where are we 
to get them.^ This is a matter of vital impor- 
tance and one which should be attended to at 
once, and not left to the rush, hurry, and con- 
fusion preceding the war." 

A possible answer to General Wood's ques- 
tion will be given further on. 

Should we find a way to supply ourselves 
with a reserve of men and of officers suffi- 
cient to bring the regular army and the militia 
to war strength in absolute uniformity of or- 
ganization, the final problem would be the es- 
tablishment of a reserve of war material. Our 
mihtary forces, particularly the militia, are not 
only without the equipment that would be 
essential to any successful campaign, but we 
have taken no means whatever of supplying 

192 



THE EXTRA TIRE IN WAR 

anything like a reserve supply of weapons, par- 
ticularly field guns, ammunition, supplies, hos- 
pital trains, and the equipment necessary to 
efficient operation of other auxiliary arms of 
the service. 

There are two vital aspects of this situation : 
The first is the safety of the nation; and the 
second is the unfairness, which in time of war 
will amount to criminal negligence on our part, 
in putting such a burden of responsibility as 
now exists upon men who have voluntarily 
stepped forward as willing to train themselves 
for the defense of the nation. 

President Taft emphasized the fact that a 
large body of men does not necessarily consti- 
tute an army, and that a volunteer enlisted 
to-day, or a militiaman enrolled to-morrow, 
cannot be expected, no matter what his desire 
may be, to be an effective fighting unit at once. 

What has been accomplished in our military 
history by the soldiers who have made up our 
forces under the slipshod system which has 
continued since the Revolution, is the highest 
tribute to the spirit and valor of the individual 

193 



ARE WE READY? 

American soldier, whether regular or militia- 
man. 

Our unfairness toward the man who volun- 
tarily assumes his share of the burden of the 
national defense was emphasized by General 
Richard Henry Lee, commander of the famous 
Partisan Legion. Years after the Revolution, 
Lee said this: "A government is the murderer 
of its citizens which sends them to the field 
uninformed and untaught, where they are 
to meet men of the same age and strength, 
mechanized by education and discipline for 
battle." 



CHAPTER X 

WELL? 

What are we going to do about it ? 

Probably, either we are going to assume that 
there is no need to do anything about it, or we 
are going to take the position that, because 
there is peril in our present state of military 
preparedness, there is necessity for deciding 
upon some means of increasing our military 
strength. 

Some of us hold very firmly to the belief that 
our system in its present application is suffi- 
cient for any possible emergency which we 
might face, and point to the successful and glo- 
rious outcome of every armed struggle in which 
we have been engaged. 

Others of us are inclined to the belief that 
those very conflicts furnish the strongest proof 
of the unnecessary disasters and needless sacri- 
fices that go with military unreadiness. 

Assuming that a first-class nation might de- 
195 



ARE WE READY? 

cide that it would be profitable and advisable 
to attack us by land, would an immediately 
available force of 50,000 trained men, plus our 
patriotism, be adequate for our defense? Evi- 
dently such a force, particularly if ill-equipped, 
poorly organized, and not supplied with suflS- 
cient field artillery and ammunition, would be 
no match against trained troops, perfectly 
equipped. The element, then, upon which we 
would rely to give us superiority and ultimate 
success, would be our patriotism. 

It was an inspiring picture which William 
J. Bryan, as Secretary of State, is quoted as 
having painted — *'The President knows that 
if this country needed a million men and needed 
them in a day, the call could go out at sunrise, 
and the sun would go down on a million men 
under arms." But it is a picture without his- 
torical background. Mr. Bryan, no doubt, in 
common with the great majority of people 
unexpert in things military, has had neither 
the time nor the inclination to study the re- 
quirements of military science. Among those 
of us whose information is of the most general 

196 




SKIRMISH DRILL AT THE BURLINGTON CAMP 




OPEN-ORDER PRACTICE AT BURLINGTON, VERMONT 



WELL ? 

character, nothing is more common than mis- 
taking military resources for mihtary strength. 
This misconception is particularly characteris- 
tic of the American people. Our histories give 
us the record of our triumphs in the Revolution, 
in the War of 1812, and succeeding conflicts; 
and since nearly all of these wars were, for the 
most part, begun by forces of militia and vol- 
unteers, we have very naturally formed the 
conviction that, since our system has been ulti- 
mately successful, there is little pressing need 
for altering it. 

We are apt to forget that, in relating the 
events of our wars, our historians have for the 
most part limited themselves to describing the 
battles that have been fought, without laying 
much stress upon the delays and unnecessary 
disasters which accompanied them; nor has it 
been pointed out to us that in nearly every in- 
stance our wars have been so protracted that 
the national resources have been well-nigh 
exhausted. 

An understanding of the enormous life and 
treasure loss which has attended our refusal to 

197 



ARE WE READY? 

carry out the principles of our military policy 
would surely lead to prompt remedy of the 
most dangerous of our present weaknesses. 

Argue as we may, we cannot evade the fact 
that all our wars have been prolonged for lack 
of preparation, and that often the news of 
humiliating defeat instead of victory has 
plunged the people into mourning. 

Patriotism cannot be relied upon to produce 
at once very large forces of volunteers. It is 
not pleasant to reflect that, out of every five 
men who went into the Union forces during 
the Civil War, one was a deserter; that early 
in the second year of the war (August 4, 1862) 
President Lincoln had to resort to the draft, 
and that before the struggle had continued two 
years Congress was compelled to adopt gen- 
eral conscription; that the only real land vic- 
tory we won in the War of 1812 was after the 
war was over; that a French navy and army 
played a powerful role at Yorktown; that 
Washington himself, in November, 1775, after 
most heroic efforts to assemble an army of 

20,000 men around Boston, wrote this: — 

198 



WELL ? 

The trouble I have in the arrangement of the 
Army is really inconceivable. Many of the officers 
sent in their names to serve in expectation of pro- 
motion; others stood aloof to see what advantage 
they could make for themselves, while a number, 
who had declined, have again sent in their names to 
serve. So great has the confusion arising from these 
and many other perplexing circumstances been that 
I found it absolutely impossible to fix this very in- 
teresting business exactly on the plan resolved on 
in the conference, though I have kept up to the 
spirit of it as near as the nature and necessity of the 
case would permit. 

The difficulty with the soldiers is as great, in- 
deed, more so, if possible, than with the officers. 
They will not enlist until they know their colonel, 
lieutenant-colonel, major, and captain, so that it 
was necessary to fix the officers the first thing, 
which is, at last, in some manner done, and I have 
given out enlisting orders. . . . 

There must be some other stimulus, besides love of 
their country, to make men fond of the service. . . . 

The number enlisted since my last is 2540 men. 
I am sorry to be necessitated to mention to you 
the egregious want of public spirit which reigns 
here. Instead of pressing to be engaged in the cause 
of their country, which I vainly flattered myself 
would be the case, I find we are likely to be deserted 
in a most critical time. Those that have enlisted 

199 



ARE WE READY? 

must have a furlough, which I have been obhged 
to grant to fifty at a time, from each regiment. 
The Connecticut troops, upon whom I reckoned, 
are as backward, indeed, if possible, more so than 
the people of this colony. Our situation is truly 
alarming, and of this General Howe is well apprised, 
it being the common topic of conversation when 
the people left Boston last Friday. No doubt when 
he is reinforced he will avail himself of the informa- 
tion. . . . Such a dearth of public spirit and such 
want of virtue, such stock- jobbing and fertility in 
all the low arts to obtain advantages of one kind 
or another in this great change of military arrange- 
ment I never saw before, and pray God's mercy that 
I may never be witness to again. What will be the 
end of these maneuvers is beyond my scan. I trem- 
ble at the prospect. We have been till this time 
enlisting about 3500 men. To engage these I have 
been obliged to allow furloughs as far as fifty men 
to a regiment, and the officers, I am persuaded, 
indulge as many more. The Connecticut troops 
will not be prevailed upon to stay longer than their 
term, saving those who have enlisted for the next 
campaign, and are mostly on furlough; such mer- 
cenary spirit pervades the whole that I should not 
be at all surprised at any disaster that may happen. 
In short, after the last of this month our lines will 
be so weakened that the minute men and militia 
must be called in for their defense, and these being 

200 



WELL ? 

under no kind of government themselves will de- 
stroy the little subordination I have been laboring 
to establish, and run me into one evil while I am 
endeavoring to avoid another; but the less must be 
chosen. . . . 

Our enlistment goes on slowly. By the returns 
last Monday, only 5917 men are engaged for the 
ensuing campaign, and yet we are told that we shall 
get the number wanted, as they are only playing 
off to see what advantages are to be made, and 
whether a bounty cannot be extorted, either from 
the public at large or individuals, in case of a 
draft. 

Similar instances of the disappointing results 
of reliance upon volunteer enlistments can be 
found almost without number in the full rec- 
ords of our military operations. While these 
facts may not be pleasant to contemplate, per- 
haps it is high time that we faced them. In 
the opinion of able military men and states- 
men, these instances do not indicate any lack 
of patriotism, but do demonstrate that a sys- 
tem which depends wholly upon patriotism to 
produce armed forces in time of necessity is 
imperfect. 

All our history gives a complete demonstra- 
201 



ARE WE READY? 

tion of the fact that our great weaknesses have 
been the persistent use of raw troops; the lack 
of an expansive organization; and voluntary 
enlistments with large bounties. Where men, 
enlisted for a period of three months, as at 
Bladensburg, are thrown against veteran 
troops, no matter what the ultimate result of 
a campaign may be, needless sacrifice and pro- 
longed fighting is inevitable. Military men 
agree that the excellence of the troops shown 
at the close of the Civil War was due, not to 
the fact that they were volunteers, but to the 
fact that their long term of service enabled 
them to become expert soldiers with discipline 
and a knowledge of military science to back 
their courage. Every battlefield of the Civil 
War after 1861 gave proof of the valor of the 
trained American soldier, but it must be re- 
membered that, in producing such soldiers, 
nearly every family in the land was in mourn- 
ing, and the nation was all but overwhelmed 
with a debt with which we are still bur- 
dened. 

A people forget easily. Already we are ceas- 
£02 



WELL ? 

ing to dwell on the costly sacrifices of the Civil 
War; and yet, unless we take some means of 
profiting by past experience, and devise some 
system of national military preparedness, we 
shall continue a condition that would, if war 
should come, involve the nation in the same 
diflficulties, and expose the country to the same 
terrible sacrifices as in the past. 

Probably no man in the history of our na- 
tion was better qualified to speak as an au- 
thority on the question of national defense 
than was Washington. Through all his writ- 
ing runs the plea for trained citizens and imi- 
f ormity of organization. At the time that Wash- 
ington wrote, the line between the militia and 
the volunteer forces of the country was an in- 
definite one. 

It has been in comparatively recent years 
that we have drawn a clear-cut distinction be- 
tween unorganized volunteers and organized 
volunteers. The peril of being unprepared to 
put trained citizens into the field on short 
notice has been sounded by military men and 
statesmen from the time of Washington down. 

203 



ARE WE READY? 

Elihu Root, in 1904, declared: — 

One . . . field of great importance remains to be 
covered by legislation: the establishment of an 
adequate system for raising, training, and officer- 
ing the volunteer forces of the future. It is of first 
importance, that the distinction between volun- 
teers and militia shall be observed. 

Our Secretaries of War and our army offi- 
cers, in administration after administration, 
have pounded away on the same point. 

In recent years we have created machinery 
which could give us not only an efficient regu- 
lar army, but an adequate and uniform divi- 
sional organization of well-equipped and well- 
trained militia. 

We have shown a disinclination to use the 
machinery. Yet none of us would question the 
fact that a nation's success in war depends 
upon the organization and application of its 
military resources. Military resources are men, 
material, and money. 

The organization of these three depends on 
the wisdom of the statesmen. The military 
men can only advise. Our Constitution gives 

204 



WELL ? 

Congress the power to raise and support armies. 
A Congress thoroughly informed on mihtary 
matters, and awake to the perils that follow in 
the wake of neghgence, would mean a military 
system wholly adequate for any emergency. 
No matter what the skill, efficiency, and cour- 
age of the individual soldier may be, the re- 
sponsibility of defeat or victory in a war hes as 
heavy on the civil as on the military authority. 
American battles have not been wholly won 
or lost in the field. A close scrutiny reveals 
that they may be lost in the Cabinet room, in 
the dome of the Capitol, or in the private office 
of the Secretary of War. Wherever the ulti- 
mate responsibiHty may lie, it is the young 
men of the country who die, and it is the 
whole people of the country who suffer. Legis- 
lative negligence is an offense against the cit- 
izenship of the country, and there can be no 
doubt that in the event of disaster, due wholly 
to the failure of Congress to enact laws that 
would have insured national safety, the Ameri- 
can people would call their representatives in 
Congress by their right names. 

205 



ARE WE READY? 

The broad purposes of our military policy 
have not changed since the time of Washing- 
ton. Our standing army and our military or- 
ganizations were, and are intended to be, merely 
the skeleton in time of peace for a great defen- 
sive force in time of war. 

The skeleton, as has been shown in previous 
chapters, is not in the very best of shape. In 
fact, certain parts of it are missing. But the 
defects, if certain simple legislation can be 
enacted, and if military cooperation between 
the States and the Federal Government can 
be secured, can be easily remedied. 

It is the total lack of any means of putting 
the meat on the skeleton that is declared by 
many military experts to be the great and seri- 
ous weakness. 

In an athletic club to which I once belonged, 
we had a crack wrestler. We called him 
"Fatty" because he was so thin. He knew 
every hold and trick of the game, and for a 
long time he took on anybody, big, little, or 
middle-sized, who cared to try conclusions 
with him — always with the same result, a 

206 



WELL ? 

scientific twist of some sort or other that sent 
the ambitious antagonist to the mat. He 
finally came to a heavy-weight who had meat 
and science combined. Our crack wrestler, 
within a few seconds, discovered that he had 
a sprained back. He never wrestled again. 
He couldn't. 

' The proposition that the good little man can- 
not successfully match strength and skill with 
the good big man is as old as the Olympiads. 
Military men with whom I have talked insist 
that the proposition applies exactly to the 
question of the chances of a good little mili- 
tary force against a good big military force. 
The great problem which they have set them- 
selves to solve is not that of the size or the 
organization of the regular army, nor yet that 
of bringing our militia organizations to a 
greater degree of uniformity and efficiency, 
though both of these go into it. It is the ques- 
tion of creating, back of the regular army and 
back of the organized militia, an adequate re- 
serve of trained men. 
Both the army and the militia are at present 
207 



ARE WE READY? 

at less than half of their war strength, and no 
means of filling out the organizations in time 
of war has been provided. 

It is because of this condition that our army- 
experts and some of our ablest statesmen are 
urging that our negligence has placed us in a 
position of peril. 

Should war suddenly come our way, there 
is no reason to believe that our situation would 
be, in its fundamental aspects, much different 
from the one which Washington faced in 1775. 
In the light of the facts and figures which an 
investigation into the present state of our 
military preparedness reveals, the following 
portion of a letter written by Washington on 
January 4, 1776, to Joseph Reed, is most 
interesting : — 

Search the volumes of history through, and I 
much question whether a case similar to ours is to 
be found, namely, to maintain a post against the 
flower of the British troops for six months together, 
without powder, and then to have one army dis- 
banded and another to be raised within the same 
distance of a reinforced enemy. It is too much to 
attempt. What may be the final issue of the last 

208 



WELL ? 

maneuver, time only can unfold. I wish this month 
was well over our heads. The same desire of retir- 
ing into a chimney corner seized the troops of New 
Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts, so 
soon as their time expired, as had wrought upon 
those of Connecticut, notwithstanding many of 
them made a tender of their services to continue 
till the lines could be sufficiently strengthened. 
We are now left with a good deal less than half- 
raised regiments and about 5000 militia, who only 
stand engaged to the middle of this month, when, 
according to custom, they will depart, let the neces- 
sity of their stay be ever so urgent. Thus for more 
than two months past I have scarcely emerged 
from one difficulty before I have been plunged into 
another. 

The confusion that would inevitably mark 
an attempt to assemble a force to repel a land 
attack, and the hopelessness of sending our 
available forces, with their inadequate equip- 
ment and organization, against 150,000 trained 
troops, have been previously shown. If, as 
our military men assert, there is no extrava- 
gance in the speculation contained in those 
chapters, as to the possible results of our 
present state of preparedness, and if it is as- 

209 



ARE WE READY? 

sumed that there is a possibihty of our being 
attacked by land, what is there that we can do 
that will not turn the United States into what 
President Wilson calls "an armed camp" and 
will in no way interfere with the economic 
activity and freedom of the individual? 

For years, our General Staff and our War 
College, our Presidents, our Secretaries of War, 
and our leading active and retired army offi- 
cers have been working on this question. 
What has been worked out combines the crea- 
tion of a trained reserve strength through 
enlistment in the regular army, with an oppor- 
tunity for the private citizen to receive mili- 
tary training. 

Should we decide upon a reserve, it should 
not only be large enough to fill up the regular 
army and the militia, but it should be suffi- 
ciently in excess of this to make up the wast- 
age for the first three months of a war: that 
is, besides being large enough to bring the 
army and the militia to war strength, the re- 
serve should be at least fifteen per cent of the 
combined war strength of both organizations. 

210 



WELL ? 

It should also be large enough to provide new 
organizations. 

We can, if we want to, accomplish this by 
legislation. We can so change our enlistment 
laws that the recruit, when enlisting, will know 
that after he has served with the colors for a 
short period of training, sufficient to make 
him proficient as a soldier, he will, for a num- 
ber of years, perhaps eight or ten, be subject 
to call to the colors in time of war and pos- 
sibly each year for a few days of additional 
training. 

Back of the regular army, back of the mili- 
tia, and back of the reserve, should we enact 
legislation which would create the reserve, 
would still be the great citizen body. Our 
military policy from the beginning has consid- 
ered this body as the real defensive strength 
of the nation. If that body should be trained, 
as it is trained in Switzerland and Australia, 
we should have an immediate military strength 
second to none in the world, and a security that 
would be the greatest safeguard against war. 

In Switzerland, the training of citizens is 
211 



ARE WE READY? 

based absolutely on the idea that the nation 
shall never go to war save for defense, and the 
closest observers of the Swiss Government and 
the Swiss people agree that the military train- 
ing of the citizens, even though that training 
is compulsory, has not in any way operated 
against the advanced democratic standards of 
that nation or against the liberty and freedom 
of its individual citizens. 

The proponents of a system of mihtary 
training for our citizens do not advocate the 
compulsory training which is a part of the 
Swiss system. They do urge, however, the ad- 
visabihty of opening the way for training to 
any citizen who desires it. A most important 
move in this direction is already well under 
way. 

During the summer of 1913, two experi- 
mental mihtary camps for the instruction of 
students of educational institutions were es- 
tablished and were highly successful. Since 
then two more have been opened. The object 
of these camps is to give the young men of the 
country an opportunity for a short course in 

212 




THE STUDENTS' CAMP AT LUDINGTON 




STUDENTS IN THE TRENCHES AT GETTYSBURG 



WELL ? 

military training should their sense of patriotic 
service prompt them to fit themselves for a 
part in the defense of the nation. It is the 
policy of these camps to make the training of 
the most intensive character. It is now sug- 
gested that the whole period of training should 
be divided into three periods of not more than 
two months each, these months to fall during 
the school and college vacation time, as well 
as during the usual business vacation. This 
training, imdertaken in time of peace, would 
be at least six times as long as the time that 
would be available for training of volunteers 
if we were suddenly confronted with war. 

It is urged that besides the benefit that 
would come to the students through the broad- 
ening influence of intimate association with 
the students of other institutions, the oppor- 
tunity for athletic contests as well as the ac- 
quired habits of discipline, obedience, and 
self-control, the nation would profit through a 
greater fostering of the patriotic spirit and a 
wider spread, among the whole citizenship of 
the country, of a more thorough knowledge of 

213 



ARE WE READY? 

military history, military policy, and military 
needs. 

These camps, it is contended, will have an 
exceptional value as a military asset, since they 
are instrumental in instructing a class of highly 
intelligent and well-educated men who, in 
time of national emergency, would be espe- 
cially well fitted to undertake the duties of 
officers. 

Under the order of the Secretary of War, 
these camps are open to students between the 
ages of eighteen and thirty, in universities, 
colleges, and the graduating classes of high 
schools, and other schools rated as such. Ap- 
plicants for admission to a student's military 
instruction camp must be citizens of the United 
States or men who have declared their inten- 
tion of becoming citizens. It is required that 
they must be of good moral character, physi- 
cally sound, and of good scholastic standing. 
Each season's training in the camp consumes 
five weeks. The students are required to at- 
tend during the full period. At the present 
time the students are required to pay their own 

214 



WELL ? 

traveling expenses to and from the camp. For 
this reason camp sites have been selected in 
as central locations as possible. The military 
authorities furnish food for $3.50 a week for 
each student, or $17.50 for each year's period 
of training. 

The students of the camps are also required 
to supply themselves with a uniform, consist- 
ing of two suits of cotton, olive drab, one extra 
pair of breeches, one campaign hat, one pair 
of leggings, and two olive drab shirts. A dis- 
tinctive hat cord is worn to distinguish the 
student's uniform from the uniform of the 
regular army. The cost for clothing is from 
$5 to $10 for each student. The Government 
furnishes, without cost, cots, blankets, tents, 
cooking outfits, a complete infantry equip- 
ment, including rifles, bayonets, cartridge belts, 
canteens, shelter tents, tent poles and pins, 
haversacks, pack carriers, mess kits, and other 
property of the quartermaster and ordnance 
departments, all of which are turned in at the 
end of the period of training. The necessary 
instructors and the personnel for the organiza- 

215 



ARE WE READY? 

tion and maintenance of camp wagon trans- 
ports, medical care and sanitation, and all 
other means of protecting the health and in- 
suring the comfort of the students, which 
under the law can be furnished by the War 
Department, are provided. 

Such troops of the regular army as can be 
spared, for purposes of demonstration and 
assisting in the instruction of the students, 
attend the camps for field maneuvers, exer- 
cises, and other forms of military training. 

The course of instruction, as outlined by 
the War Department, is along the following 
lines: — 

The theoretical principles of tactics, includ- 
ing advance and rear guards, patrols, outposts, 
and combat, are studied and explained in a 
series of informal talks, tactical walks, and war 
games conducted by selected competent offi- 
cers. 

The practical application of the above is 
carried out in the field by the students them- 
selves, and also in conjunction with the regular 
troops, blank ammunition being used. 

^16 



WELL ? 

Military map-making and road-sketching 
are explained and opportunities for practical 
work in that subject offered to those who de- 
sire it. 

The proper handling and use of the rifle is 
taught and experience given by means of gal- 
lery (or subcaliber) practice, and by actual fir- 
ing with the service rifle and ammunition on 
the target range. To those students making 
the necessary qualifications over the prescribed 
course, the National Rifle Association of Amer- 
ica offers its prescribed marksmanship badges 
and a trophy, to be competed for by teams rep- 
resenting the different educational institutions. 

Physical drill, marching, camping, tent- 
pitching, making and breaking camp, loading 
and unloading wagons, camp expedients, field 
cooking, camp sanitation, first aid to the in- 
jured, personal hygiene, and the care of troops 
in the field are taught by practice. 

Informal talks by selected oflScers are given 
on the following subjects: Use and duties of 
the different arms and branches of the serv- 
ice (infantry, field artillery, cavalry, engineers, 

217 



AEE WE READY? 

signal troops, and the medical corps) ; field forti- 
fication, including the laying-out, construction, 
and use of trenches; military bridge-building; 
use of explosives; demolitions; the installa- 
tion and operation of field lines of electrical 
information and the use of buzzers, field tele- 
phones, and radio-telegraphic apparatus; sig- 
nal flags, heliographs, and acetylene lanterns, 
and other apparatus used by signal corps or- 
ganizations in the field; the tactical organiza- 
tion of the military forces of the United States, 
the reasons therefor, and comparison with that 
of foreign armies; the supply (food and mate- 
rial) of an army and the problems connected 
therewith; the psychology of war; the military 
history of our country — not the illuminated 
school-book versions of our victories merely, 
but the true versions, as taken from the official 
records, of our failures and defeats, as well as 
our successes and victories, with reasons for 
them; our military policy, past and present, the 
necessity for some sound, definite military pol- 
icy; and the present scheme of organization 
of the land forces of the United States as pre- 

218 



WELL ? 

pared by the General Staff of the Army and 
recommended by the War Department to Con- 
gress. 

The schedule of instruction includes a prac- 
tice march of several days' duration, in which, 
as nearly as possible, there are actual cam- 
paign conditions of march, bivouac, and com- 
bat such as the assumed situation would exact 
in war. 

To each student who successfully completes 
the prescribed course of instruction, a certifi- 
cate is issued and his name kept on file in the 
War Department, with such remarks as to his 
degree of eflBciency and recommendations as to 
his fitness for future command as may be made 
by the officers in charge. 

A correct understanding of the principles 
involved being considered of more importance, 
in the short time available for instruction, than 
the exercise itself, only that degree of precision 
in close order drill necessary to insure disci- 
pline is insisted upon. Extended order drill and 
field exercises are considered most important. 
Work is confined, as far as practicable, to the 

219 



ARE WE READY? 

morning, leaving the afternoons and evenings, 
with due regard to proper supervision, at the 
disposal of the student for rest, athletic sports, 
and recreation, or for such other work or in- 
struction as he may desire and which can be 
given. 

All companies commanded by a selected reg- 
ular army oflBcer, or officers, are aided by sub- 
altern officers and non-commissioned officers 
selected from among the students themselves. 

The discipline exacted is strict and just. 
Students are on a cadet status; that is, they 
are treated with the courtesy due prospective 
officers, but subject to all rules and regulations 
of the camp and to disciplinary measures for 
infractions. 

The greatest care has been exercised by the 
General Staff in the selection of camp-sites, in 
order that they shall fulfill not only the mihtary 
requirements of a good camp, with suitable 
grounds for maneuver purposes, but that they 
shall be located in a healthful, cool, and pleas- 
ant climate and in a region in each section 
offering advantages desirable from the summer- 

220 



WELL ? 

outing standpoint, such as being on a lake, the 
seashore, or in the mountains. 

The idea of the students' camp has gained 
ground with surprising rapidity. Not only has it 
become intensely popular with students them- 
selves, but many parents have written letters 
congratulating the army authorities upon the 
benefits derived by their sons from the camps 
which have already been operated. Already 
one organization has sprung up, which is called 
the "Association of the National Reserve 
Corps of the United States." H. S. Drinker, 
President of Lehigh University, is president 
of the organization, and the following heads of 
representative colleges throughout the country 
act as its advisory committee : John G. Hibben, 
President of Princeton University; A. Law- 
rence Lowell, President of Harvard University; 
Arthur Twining Hadley , President of Yale Uni- 
versity ; John H. Finley, President of the Uni- 
versity of the State of New York; H. B. Hutch- 
ins, President of the University of Michigan; 
George H. Denny, President of the University 
of Alabama; E. W. Nichols, Superintendent, 

221 



ARE WE READY ? 

Virginia Military Institute; Benjamin Ide 
Wheeler, President of the University of Cali- 
fornia. 

At the close of the first period of instruc- 
tion in 1913, this committee issued the follow- 
ing statement which has a peculiar interest as 
bearing upon recent objections to the military 
training of citizens, based on the ground that 
such preparation tends toward militarism : — 

After careful inquiry regarding the organization 
and management of the camps of instruction for 
college students, established by the Secretary of 
War in the summer of 1913, we take pleasure in 
certifying to their excellence. 

The military instruction was thorough. The dis- 
cipline was strict; but the work was so well arranged 
that it caused enjoyment rather than hardship. 
The food, sanitation, and medical care were good, 
and the lessons received by the students in these 
matters were scarcely less valuable than the mili- 
tary instruction itself. 

We commend these camps to the attention of 
college authorities as a most important adjunct to 
the educational system of the United States, fur-^ 
nishing the student a healthful and profitable sum- 
mer course at moderate expense. 

222 





PRESIDENT WILSOX DELIVERING AN ADDRESS IN FRONT OF 
INDEPENDENCE HALL, PHILADELPHIA, JULY 4, 1914 



WELL ? 

Woodrow Wilson, in n statement issued 
September 22, 1913, as President, took this 
view of instruction camps : — 

I am very much interested in the successful work- 
ing-out of the idea of these college camps. I believe 
the students attending will derive not only a great 
deal of physical benefit from the healthful, open- 
air life, but also that they will benefit from the dis- 
cipline, habits of regularity, and the knowledge of 
personal and camp sanitation which the experience 
in camp will give them. 

At about the same time the following en- 
dorsement came from William H. Taft: — 

For young men who have a taste for outdoor life 
and military training, — and, indeed, for "rough- 
ing it," — I can conceive of no better opportunity 
for them to gratify this taste than to accept the in- 
vitation of the War Department. They can be sure 
it will be no boys' play if they go into it, but it will 
not only give them substantial knowledge of the 
principles of military science, but an opportunity 
for physical development and muscular training, 
and a regular life that will contribute greatly to 
their health and strength. On the other hand, the 
knowledge that they will acquire will be a very good 
foundation for their becoming members of state 

223 



ARE WE READY? 

militia in their homes after graduation, and will 
fit them to come to the rescue of the country in an 
emergency whenever that may arise. 

I commend the plan to the earnest consideration 
of all who have the tastes I have indicated, and 
urge that they consult the agent of the War De- 
partment who is coming here, in order to learn just 
exactly what their duties and what their responsi- 
bilities will be. 

The suggestion has come from General Wood, 
who is a college man and knows college men, and is 
most sympathetic with college men who love out- 
door life and have an inclination to do a little sol- 
diering. 

Lindley M. Garrison, as Secretary of War, 
also has expressed his approval of the conduct 
of military camps and the ideas back of them. 

It is advocated that, with his training in the 
instruction camps completed, the trained man 
should be held for a period of six years as a re- 
servist, with the understanding that he will not 
be called to the colors except for defense and 
for a yearly period of instruction not to exceed 
eight days. As each student in the military 
camp completed his instruction, he could be 
assigned to some reserve organization. 

224 



WELL ? 

With a steadily increasing number of trained 
citizens would go the immediate necessity of 
finding officers. All regular officers are needed 
with the regular establishment and the militia 
is short of officers. Outside of these two organ- 
izations we have the following source of supply: 
A very limited number of graduates of the 

better class of military schools; 
A certain number of former non-commis- 
sioned officers of the regular army, who 
have the necessary qualifications de- 
manded of the lower grades of volunteer 
officers; 
A very small list of men, who have qualified 
through examination for appointment as 
officers of volunteer organizations; 
A certain number of men who have passed 
through the Students' Instruction Camps 
recently established. 
All these sources combined could produce a 
number of available men for officers which 
would be insignificant in comparison with the 
requirements. Those who are forwarding the 
plan advocate that military instruction in all 

^25 



ARE WE READY? 

schools where regular officers are instructors 
be standardized; that each year, from the 
graduates of these schools, from 500 to 1000 
men be appointed as provisional second lieu- 
tenants in the various arms of the service, in- 
fantry, cavalry, field and coast artillery, serv- 
ing for one year in this capacity, and receiving 
the full pay and allowances of a second lieu- 
tenant in the regular army. 

It is argued that this system would supply 
a well-trained reserve officer who would have, 
in addition to his military training at school or 
college, a full year's service in the regular army. 
The marked success of the experimental schools 
has led to the encouragement of plans for a 
very great extension of the system, and it is 
expected that important details, such as fixing 
the course of instruction and securing govern- 
ment aid in the way of uniforms, rations, and 
transportation, will be speedily worked out. 

Here, then, is what we can do about it, 
whether or not we decide that it is worth while 
to do anything about it: — 

226 



WELL ? 

We can supply the necessary equipment for 
all arms of the service in both regular army 
and militia; 
We can provide an adequate reserve of guns, 
ammunition, and other necessary imple- 
ments and supplies; 
We can abolish useless and costly army posts 
and concentrate our regular forces into large 
and uniform groups in strategic locations; 
We can bring our militia and regular army 

into uniformity of organization; 
We can give our citizens a chance to receive 

military instruction; 
We can build up a strong reserve. 
We can do all this without altering in the 
slightest the position of the military in its sub- 
ordination to the civil authority. 

And if we want to be doubly secure against 
an attempt of any man or set of men to turn the 
United States of America into another Prussia, 
we can make it the law, since the people foot 
the bills and do the fighting, that offensive war 
shall not be declared except by direct vote of 
all the people. 

227 



ARE WE READY? 

That is national referendum. It would 
quickly and definitely solve such problems as 
the question of intervention in Mexico, and 
would be most troublesome to gentlemen who 
would fill their pockets by driving the nation 
to a season of killing and of being killed. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



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